


our praise is not for them (but the ones who bloom in the bitter snow)

by thistleandthorn



Series: the ice maiden of winterfell [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alive Starks (ASoIaF), Angst, As In Life Ghost!Petyr Has Few Boundaries, Excessive and Unncessary Use of Parentheses, F/M, R Plus L Equals J, Sad smut, Sansa Stark is Elizabeth I, Still Attempting Plot (I Think), Still Mostly Sanrion Pining, Tyrion/Sansa are Broken Up, but they're bad at it, library smut, slight dubcon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:07:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 47,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26053168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thistleandthorn/pseuds/thistleandthorn
Summary: She trailed behind him, trying to keep up with him, “Robb, please, please, Robb—”He spun on her, stopping her, approached her, backed her against the wall, “Sansa, when will it end?”“Robb—”“You are all so chockful of secrets, Sansa, you and Bran and Arya and Jon.”--(“I saw what happened, I see what is happening,” Bran says. It is after council meetings, Tyrion has come to present him with Jeyne’s newest proposed agenda, “We must be together now.”)--Six months after the election, the Starks meet at Widow's Watch for a conference with their brother, the Three-Eyed Raven.Things do not go to plan.Sequel to 'for the lady is risen.'
Relationships: Arya Stark & Sansa Stark, Bran Stark & Robb Stark, Bran Stark & Sansa Stark, Catelyn Stark/Ned Stark (Past), Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth (Past), Jon Snow & Catelyn Tully Stark, Jon Snow & Sansa Stark, Jon Snow/Original Male Character (mentioned), Petyr Baelish/Sansa Stark (implied) - Relationship, Robb Stark & Sansa Stark, Talisa Maegyr/Robb Stark, Tyrion Lannister & Jon Snow, Tyrion Lannister/Sansa Stark, Tyrion/Sansa/THE LAND
Series: the ice maiden of winterfell [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1850377
Comments: 294
Kudos: 203





	1. prologue

When Tyrion Lannister, Hand to the King, Lord of Casterley Rock and Warden of the West, the Kingmaker, the Queenbreaker, the Imp, writes to Sansa Stark, First of Her Name, Queen in the North, the Red Wolf, Ice Maiden of Winterfell, he almost always sends two letters.

\--

_(Old Nan tells her a story:_

_“Once there were two girls: one was good and kind and courteous, one was wicked and sneaky and bad. Their mother only loved the wicked girl and never made her do any of the work and left all the chores to the good sister. One day, she made the good sister go to the well to collect water, which was many, many miles away which the girl did without complaint. When she was there, she met an old woman who asked to share some water with her. And she did without a contrary word.”)_

\--

The first is what she presents to her council, what she gives to Jeyne to craft a reply to, and this time it is as follows:

_To Sansa, First of Her Name, Queen in the North,_

_I hope this missive finds you in good health._

_The small council has approved the new trade agreements as drafted by your council at the last diplomatic mission. We have also agreed to your proposal to meet at Widow’s Watch and we thank the Flints for their continued hospitality._

_We received our first shipment of whale oil and our third lumber shipment last week which was much appreciated. The Northern dock is still under construction, though Lord Davos assures me personally that its construction is on time. Please assure Prince Robb that his requests for the refortification near the Twins has been agreed upon and Lord Bronn is waiting to send laborers until this year’s tax collection is complete. Once that is finished, they will be sent immediately to attend to repairs._

_The Iron Bank representatives have agreed to talks at the conference if they are carried out with the utmost discretion. I have continued with the strategy discussed in our last letters and they seem responsive. The King is eager to resolve this issue and so we urge your council to read the attached terms discussed by the Bank. I will write again soon._

_Regards,_

_Lord Tyrion Lannister, Hand to the King_

\--

_(“But little did she know that the woman was, in fact, a sorceress.”)_

The second letter she always keeps in a hidden drawer in a compartment beneath her desk. No one has the key to this compartment but her and no one knows that the drawer exists except her.

_(“That’s not quite true,” Petyr Baelish says but she hushes him.)_

\--

_(“When she returned home, her mother asked her what had taken her so long but when the girl tried to speak, she began to choke until she finally spit out a pearl. She tried again and this time a diamond fell from her lips. Then a third time: a white rose. The mother realized what good fortune she had and between gold coins and wrapped candies and rubies, the girl told her what had transpired at the well.”)_

\--

The drawer is small, can only fit the little notes that she receives, and a mockingbird pin besides.

\--

_(“The mother was greedy and saw the opportunity to become wealthy and so she sent her second daughter, the nasty one, to the well. There, too, the sorceress approached the girl and asked her for water. But the girl would not share and shouted at the old woman instead.”)_

\--

The key she keeps in a little box that sits atop her fireplace mantel. When she sees the letter, tied to the leg of a Southern raven, she reads it once, then creases their edges.

\--

_(“When she returned home, her mother asked the girl what had happened at the well. The girl tried but then began to choke. Her mother watched greedily, holding out a cup to catch whatever treats the girl could push between her teeth. But instead, the girl coughed and coughed until a snake crawled up her throat, bursting forth. It fell into her mother’s lap.”)_

\--

This is what those say:

_Dearest Sansa,_

_I just miss you in a simple desperate human way. I miss you more even more than I could have believed, and I was prepared to miss you a good deal—_

and

_Darling,_

_So, this letter is really just a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defenses. And I don’t really resent it—_

and

_My love,_

_I am reduced to a thing that wants Sansa—_

It is all things he would never say to her if they were in the same room, nose to nose. She sometimes wonders if he knows that he’s sending them at all, if he sends them all in drunken stupors. Maybe it’s another of his kindnesses, to her, so she does not have to bear the weight of his devotion in the flesh, to himself, so he does not have to bear the weight of her hand on his shoulder, denying him again and again.

\--

_(“Tell me a story,” Petyr says, lounging back, legs crossed and extended under his desk. She is sitting quietly with a book, voice hoarse from the effort of charming the visiting Vale lords, the sweat from the dance that evening cooling on her back. Aunt Lysa had gone to bed, “I like stories.”_

_Me too, she thinks.)_

\--

She locked them away.

\--

_(She tells him.)_

\--

She does not respond to his letters.

But when she must write to him about the castles on the border or the wardship of the Twins or the import taxes, she always includes a postscript.

It is there she dares to ask him if Galladon is well and if Davos’ son has wed that noble lady he is so besotted with and if Sam’s history of the Seven Kingdoms has gotten up to the Conquest yet. She writes to him that Jon has fallen in love again, isn’t that nice. Her last letter tells him that now that Jeyne is getting married that she thinks there will be children in Winterfell again.

\--

_(“And I suppose you think that you are the good one who speaks in flowers?” Petyr says sleepily, peeking out from underneath the hoods of his eyes._

_“I don’t think anything. It’s just a story.”_

_“Sure,” Petyr says, smiling slightly, gets up, stretches, “Though, sweetling, I cannot help but your pretty lips would get terribly cut from all those thorns. And then no one would want to kiss them. Certainly not Harry.”)_

\--

This time, he sends none. And there is no one to tell of it.

\--

_(She dreams in Old Nan’s stories, sometimes. Wolves dark against the snow, ravens with too many eyes, princesses in lonely towers, fools squinting through bath steam, sweating through their motley._

_Her third wedding night, after she is married to the North, she dreams about the sorceress by the well and gaping cavernous mouths, pointed grey teeth, spiders skittering down her chin. Then a rose bush rooting in her stomach, knotting with her entrails, forcing its way up her through her chest, until her jaw is unhinged, her mouth stuffed with leaves and petals.)_


	2. once upon a time there was a railroad line (and a lady steppin' off the train, with a suitcase full of summertime)

Tyrion did not like the Iron Bank. He did not like the way they spoke, couched their language, cracked pomegranate seeds between their teeth, looked over his head, ignored Bronn, and explained that there were _loose ends_ and _recalculated interest_ and _given the secession of the North and the way the funding streams were previously paid out_ and _our interest in your continent has not ceased, Lord Hand._

What it meant, when their words were cut and skinned and dried, was that with Daenerys leaving Yun Kai and Mereen in chaos, Volantis wilting under the weight of a new fever, and Pentos in a drought, the Bank’s Eastern bets were not paying off.

Not to mention the newborn Bank of Lys.

He should be flattered, really, he and Sansa both, that they were being courted to be exploited by the Bank and, in truth, he would be more willing to entertain the idea that somehow the Six Kingdoms needed more Essosi gold if the officials did not keep looking to see how his feet did not reach the floor.

“I have written the Queen in the North and she has graciously extended the invitation for you to attend the first part of the conference with her brother the King. Although, I am interested in your proposal, she will be the challenge, my lords, very firm in separating herself from the past of the Six Kingdoms.”

_(I will lure them in, she had written in her last letter, then you will set the trap. Together we will spring it.)_

The officials tittered amongst themselves, wishing him _safe travels, my lord_ and _see you there, my lord_ and _we will see you from across the port tomorrow, my lord._

He waved them away before returning to his chambers. His steward had packed his trunks already, left Tyrion to sort through his own books and papers. He did quickly, shuffling together all the correspondence and financial papers he needed, discarded those fragments where he had scratched—

 _‘Darling’_ or _‘My love’_ or _‘Sansa’_

\--

_(He had not kissed her before he had left. Just her hand._

_“Not too long,” she had said._

_“No, not long at all.”)_

\--

The wheelhouse rattled to a stop.

“Are we stopping again?” asked Catelyn, flipped the curtain covering the small window, peering out at the tufted slopes.

_(Catelyn pricks and pricks and pricks and pricks at her patience._

_Catches Talisa’s eye. Her goodsister hides her smile with feigned interest in the scenery.)_

Sansa nodded, “This section of the queensroad just thawed out, they warned me this morning that it would be hard to pass through the mud.”

Catelyn sighed and settled back into her seat.

“We are close, though,” Sansa said. She opened the door slightly, crouching to call out, “Arya, where are we?”

A distant: “We’d be there by nightfall if these idiots knew how to manage a wagon—no, other way! Other way! By the Gods, I have to do everything myself!”

Sansa shut the door firmly, swallowed her own sharpness, “Soon, Mother, soon.”

_(“Good girl,” Petyr says, pats her knee. He is pressed up against her in the wheelhouse. He’s pressed up against her everywhere, all the time, intruding on places where he is not, is no longer, never was welcome._

_He glanced out the window, “Your sister’s right. We should be there by nightfall.”)_

\--

Widow’s Watch was smaller than Winterfell but not by much. It jutted treacherously over the sea, towering over the cracked and broken bay. Landing at the rickety dock below the cliffs was difficult. So difficult that Davos had insisted on handling it himself, pushing aside the captain with a gruff shout.

It had been a hard journey, their ship tossed and thrown about at the mercy of the rough Northern seas. They had engaged a small crew for their modest party: just Bran, Tyrion, Brienne and Galladon, Bronn, and Davos.

“We should have divided us between two ships,” he muttered to Bran, “If this goes down so will the whole of the Six Kingdoms.”

Bran had just smiled serenely, “Never fear, Lord Hand. Our time has not yet come.”

_(He hated when Bran did that. Referenced his own mortality.)_

Galladon sat in Tyrion’s cabin, face pressed against the small porthole window, at the churning grey sea. The boy had been fine the whole time, Tyrion thought, half proud, half resentful, bouncing about the deck, ignoring the saltwater slosh, as his mother and uncle were ill off the side.

“Uncle Tyrion,” he turned to ask, his breath whistling slightly through his missing front teeth, “Will the Queen be there?”

_(Galladon, another child like him and Sansa, nourished by stories. Loved the idea of Sansa—the Ice Maiden of Winterfell with hair made of flame who lived in a castle of snow. He would live there, too, one day before he was to take the Rock. Learn to be a knight, to be befriended by assassins and wildlings, an adventurer descended from heroes.)_

“Yes, and her sister,” Tyrion said, wobbling to Galladon’s side, to peer over his shoulder, out at the surging waves, “Her brother and mother, as well.”

“Is she very beautiful?”

_(“You’re beautiful,” he says to her, mindless but true, heated limbs intertwined. Her eyes widened, thumb brushed against his collarbone, hand in his hair._

_“You are, too,” she says, drags a reverent finger across his breastbone._

_Then she breaks both their hearts.)_

“Yes,” it sounded teasing and he ruffled Galladon’s curls, “And a true warrior. Now we must needs find your mother. We are to land soon.”

\--

They landed by thudding into the dock so forcefully that Brienne had to grasp the back of Bran’s chair to prevent him from skittering into the sea foam as they all slid.

They were greeted by Lord Flint, as jovial and pleasant a man as Tyrion had ever known. A friend if Tyrion was feeling sentimental. 

“Your Grace,” he said, sweeping into a deep bow.

_(His wife, the Lady Flint, had approached him at that bitter feast celebrating Robb’s defeat._

_“Lord Tyrion, I am sorry about the Qu—”_

_How_ dare _she._

_“I don’t know what you are speaking of, Lady Flint.”_

_Uncharacteristically unsteady, Lady Flint replied, “Of course, my lord.”_

_He looks to Sansa, looking like the Queen of Spring, golden skirts spread, flowers in her hair._

_He grabs the flagon of wine and goes to see her brother.)_

Lord Flint’s men pushed a broad ramp up against the ship and they descended. Tyrion grasped Galladon’s elbow. Lord Flint’s men had laid two wide, flat boards across the cracked stones and crushed shells. Brienne pushed Bran along the length of the plank as Flint’s men swung the next in front of them, in an awkward game of leapfrog. It was an undignified entrance for a king, bumping along, lagging as the men heaved the boards about, his councilors bouncing on the balls of their feet as they shuffled behind their king.

_(This whole conference lacked the pomp that Tyrion preferred—no silks, no trumpeters, no processions._

_Even getting Sansa and Bran to agree to meet with the Iron Bank had been a challenge:_

_“Your Grace, we need to meet with them now, who knows when we will meet all again like this?”_

_Bran barely turns his head, “Well, if all goes to plan, about a year.”)_

After great effort, their party ascended the steep cliff, Bran’s chair jerking and jolting through the pockmarked ground, Tyrion and Galladon slipping on the carpet of pebbles. At the top of the slope was Lady Flint.

She curtsied, pressed her lips to Bran’s signet ring, “Your Grace,” She straightened and said, “The Queen and your brother the King Beyond the Wall are due to arrive this evening.”

_(Tyrion tries to insist that they should have a public presentation of gifts like they had at their meeting four years ago._

_“Absolutely not,” it was rare that Bran was so firm, so_ clear.

_Tyrion raised a question in his eyebrow._

_“This is not business, this is family.”_

_“They are one and the same for siblings who rule.”_

_“An unfortunate side effect. No gifts.”)_

Bran smiled which for Bran meant mostly his eyes, “I know.”

\--

“Finally,” Catelyn breathed as they halted abruptly in the courtyard.

Sansa could not help but agree. She rubbed dozing Talisa’s arm until she awoke, murmuring, and then all clamored out of the wheelhouse. It was misting, the sky grey and wan, heavy with the promise of rain.

Robb and Jon had declined the wheelhouse and ridden together, Ghost canting beside them. For once, she envied Robb’s foresight. As soon as Catelyn unbent from the compartment, she was in motion, anxious and pacing. Robb strode over to them, “Where is Bran?”

Catelyn craned her neck, wrung her hands, as if Bran were lost in the crowd of stewards and servants unpacking the horses, “I don’t know.”

_(“He’s different than he was, Mother,” she had tried to warn._

_“We all are.”_

_It feels like a bite.)_

The main entrance into Widow’s Watch was dominated by wide steps. Lady Flint bobbed down them now, arms outstretched in greeting, curtsied, “Oh, Your Grace. Princess Talisa. Prince Robb. Queen Mother. We are honored to have you here.”

Sansa raised her up and pressed a kiss to her cheek, “We have missed you at court, Lady Flint.”

Lady Flint bowed again in acknowledgement, “And I you, Your Grace,” she winked, “Though I cannot say I have missed the court.” 

Robb spoke first, firm hand on Catelyn’s wrist, “My lady, is my brother here yet?”

Lady Flint ushered towards the door, “Please, he arrived just a few hours ago, the King and his party are just inside here—”

Catelyn stepped forward briskly, “My lady, I must see my son.”

\--

Bran and his party were just in the doorway, sheltered from the thin fog. Brienne with Galladon, drowsing on her shoulder, Davos, and Bronn, all stood behind Bran. Tyrion was beside him, always beside him, always ready to whisper in his ear.

_(Four years ago: “You could have made yourself king,”_

_“Yes, the people would have been thrilled with the Lannister Imp on the Iron Throne,” he said._

_“But you_ could _have.”_

 _“I_ should _have convinced Jon to do it.”_

_“Tyrion.”_

_“There are men meant to lead and men meant to serve.”_

_“And Bran?”_

_“I am not sure Bran is a man at all.”)_

Catelyn and Robb rushed forward, pushing past Sansa and Arya and Jon, fell to their knees, kissed his hands, stroked his hair—

“Oh, my boy, my baby _._ ”

_(It knocks her down again, leaves her breathless. Simply how much the gods have restored to them._

_“What a lovely scene,” Petyr agrees in her ear, his arm banded about her shoulders, she tries to shake him off but he remains, kisses her cheek.)_

Bran looked to Sansa, her hands intertwined with Arya’s, she inclined her head slightly, he looked down to their mother and brother and their tear-stained cheeks, smiled, placed his hands on their bowed heads, “I am glad to see you, too.”

\--

_(“I saw what happened, I see what_ is _happening,” Bran says. It is after council meetings, Tyrion has come to present him with Jeyne’s newest proposed agenda, “We must be together now.”)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Road to Hell" from Hadestown....i just feel eventually these titles are going to get longer than the chapter itself. XD
> 
> 9/16/2020: did some light editing for clarification, thanks PirittaVlasta! 
> 
> thank you for reading!! <3


	3. brother, i can see you're blinded by the sadness of it all (look a little closer, there's a crack in the wall!)

_(Aunt Lysa had once told her of her mother: “She always ate the cakes first. Always went for the sweetest thing, the most obvious thing.”_

_Sansa is not like her mother. Sansa always ate her proper food first. Sometimes even passed over the plates of cherry custard and sugared almonds and dishes of blackberries and cream. But she’s utterly weak for lemon cakes, pesters the cooks if she knows they’re making them, feels a bit guilty because she can never ever ever stop at just one.)_

\--

The Northern party departed to change for dinner. Catelyn kissed Bran’s brow as she left.

Brienne allowed Tyrion to take sleepy Galladon to her chamber and put him to bed so she could speak with Lady Flint about tomorrow’s arrangements for the Iron Bank’s arrival. Galladon had inherited his mother’s height, tall for a boy of almost six, and Tyrion could not carry him, settling for having the boy trail grumpily after him, whining, “I don’t _want_ to go to sleep. It’s not _fair._ ” 

_(“Uncle, no!” Myrcella cried, “No! I don’t want to. Joff gets to go to the feast, it’s not fair!”_

_“Come now, I’ll tell you about the dragons.”)_

The boy settled beneath the blankets, folding his arms, eyes accusatory, looked like his dead sister, “I will not sleep.”

“Fair enough,” Tyrion said, settling into a chair next to the bed, “Though you will be quite tired on the morrow, my lord.”

“I am not a lord,” Galladon said definitively. Though Tyrion suspected that most anything that he said now would be cause for defiance.

“Not yet.”

“You’re a lord and you’re boring.”

“My apologies, my _lord._ I shall leave you now.”

He made a show of getting up from his chair, checking his pockets to see if he had dropped anything, and going to the door. As he reached it, “No, wait, Uncle Tyrion—”

He turned, “Yes, Galladon?”

“Tell me a story.” Commanding. Has to shove down the fear that he will be like Joffrey was—petulant, demanding. Not tonight. He was just tired tonight, like any boy of six might be.

He returned to the chair, dragged it closer, propped his feet on the edge of the bed, “And which one would you like to hear this evening?”

Galladon thought seriously for a moment, then said, “Tell me about the Queen.”

“Queen Sansa?”

Galladon nodded, already drooping onto his pillow.

Tyrion nodded, leaned forward, stroked away the ringlets falling into his eyes, “Alright.”

\--

_(_ _Here’s the truth: When Tyrion leaves, it is easy to pretend that there was nothing amiss. They are apart so often that she does not think on it. And there is so much to_ do.

_Robb needs to coddled and reprimanded and respected and punished. Then there are the little things that got forgotten in the drama of the election. The Iron Bank’s letter arrives. Whale oil takes up an inordinate amount of her time. There are concerns about the spread of the red priests in White Harbor and this bloody conference. There’s Jeyne’s surprise betrothal and Arya’s preparations to depart. All those take up her time as well._

_There’s no space even when she is left alone. It’s good this way, she thinks, when she notices no love letters, I must keep going, going, going—)_

\--

Robb came to her chamber as she dressed for dinner, “Is there anything else you need for before the Bank arrives tomorrow?”

_(She can see the degradation in his face.)_

_(They had not fought since that morning after the election. Been the picture of civility.)_

She shook her head, “No, I have their latest letters.”

_(She still avoids him. Spends her nights with Jeyne, walks with Talisa, her mother brushes her hair. But Robb. Robb she cannot look at outside of meetings._

_“It’s because you know he was right, sweetling,” Petyr reminds her casually. Sees her face, “At least a bit right.”)_

Robb nodded, “So it’s Caspar—he’s the young one—”

“The one with the marriage proposal, yes. Janos and Bartholomew, they are his uncles,” she dipped her finger in a pot of red paint, dabbed it on her lips, tipped her chin, to examine her handiwork, reapplied.

“They only sent three?”

Sansa nodded, “But their most important three.”

Robb shuffled his papers—

_(“He’s still learning the system,” Petyr said soothingly at the look on her face, “We must be patient.”)_

\--pulled out the original letter, a copy of which Bran had also received, that had set off this particular chain of events.

He looked up suddenly, “Is the head of the new Bank of Lys his _brother_?”

_(Petyr patted her shoulder, “Patience. It’s hard, sweetling, I know. He’ll remember in time.”)_

She nodded, picked up a stick of kohl to ring around her eyes, reviewed, _(again),_ “The Iron Bank is, for the first time in three hundred years, in serious trouble. Essos is in trouble, thanks to Daenerys—”

_(“Well, now, that’s not entirely fair,” Petyr chides.)_

“—and much of their money was tied up in ventures there. Now all of those are falling through one by one. By some miracle, for once, it is Westeros that is actually growing. They have come here before, proposed marriages, deals—”

“But they’re a Bank.”

_(“I guess slow learning is a Stark trait,” Petyr sighs. Seems to mean it._

_She nearly pitches her shoe at him.)_

She drew a breath, “The Iron Bank has never been just a bank. Their officials sit in the governments of almost every one of the Free Cities. They gave the Lannisters the crown. They make their money off the backs of those wanting power—any power—thrones, trade routes, men. That is their currency as much as coin. They have no loyalties to place—well, perhaps, Braavos—” she waved her hand dismissively, “Doesn’t matter, it’s not to us,” she paused in her lecture, fingered the array of necklaces her maid had laid out for her to choose from, picked one up examined it, “But the East is failing them and to compound the issue, there’s been a coup of sorts. Caspar’s brother, who was thought to take over the bank, left, taking with him several of their associates and joined the Bank of Lys which has always been quite—” she fiddled with the clasp of her necklace, “— _insignificant._ Up until this point.” She fixed the necklace in the mirror, shifted slightly in her seat to see how it gleamed, “They’ve made several interesting investments—the kind of the Iron Bank would never have dreamed of, for the risk. Including funding the army that aims to upset the Iron-Bank-backed rule of Norvos.”

“We heard they were at war in Volantis but—”

“Norvos sits at the head of a branch of rivers. Whoever controls Norvos controls the trade routes to the South and further East—”

_(“Too much, too much, don’t condescend,” warns Petyr, “He lived there, remember?”)_

Robb sighed, “But what are _we_ trying to do?”

“Well, the Iron Bank is losing. So, they are turning to Westeros as the way of the future.”

“And you intend to—”

“Well, we need the money. Both Bran and us. We are land rich in the North but coin poor—with the Lannister mines failing, the forests south of the reach decimated, both the North and the South are struggling. We simply need more gold.”

“So, you intend to let them open a bank branch here?”

_(Petyr shrugged, “Let’s not overwhelm him today.”)_

Sansa shrugged, “We will see what they say.”

\--

_(The night before he leaves to go home, he goes to her solar, they make a decision._

_He leaves her chambers, leaves_ her _._

_And in the corridor, he comes across Catelyn Stark, lying in wait._

_“Lord Hand,” she greets._

_“Queen Mother,” he says._

_“I hope you have a safe journey home, my lord.”_

_“Thank you,” he says. Her eyes are boring into him. He moves past her._

_“She’s a married woman now, Lord Tyrion.”_

_He stopped. Pivoted. Grit his teeth, damming up the flood of words on his tongue, says instead, leonine, “I do wish you good fortune, Lady Stark, in what is to come.”)_

\--

By the time Galladon actually fell asleep, he was late for dinner. The rain had started by now, battering the castle.

The whole party rose upon his entrance. He bowed to Bran and the Flints with many apologies, kissed Queen Sansa’s hand—

_(He kisses her hand and thinks: I fucked this woman once. I had her begging in my bed.)_

_(But he shakes himself of it because he thinks it is unkind.)_

\--and took the only seat left open, next to Princess Talisa. They dined on a thick soup of smoked fish, crumbling brown bread and small rounds of soft white cheese stamped with wolves and ships and ravens, sticky raspberry tarts, a salad of tender greens.

Jon and Brienne were swapping battle stories. Bronn was telling Lord Flint something that had him choking on his tart with laughter and looking furtively to Lady Flint. Robb and Catelyn were on either side of Bran, Catelyn clasped his hand, Robb’s arm slung about his shoulder—

_(It sparks a memory of Tyrion’s first visit to Winterfell. Robb always sat like that whenever the young ones were near, protective, like the thud of Ghost’s paw on Jon’s thigh._

_Bran looked to him over their shoulders. This was hard for him, Tyrion knew, he looked like Galladon, persistent through the exhaustion. But his eyes were pleading:_

_“I don’t know what to do.”)_

The more he tried to stop looking at her, the more he seemed to do it. Sansa sat down the table from him, next to her sister and Davos, good-naturedly listening to the pair debate ship construction.

_(She had changed into a gown of white wool. Simple and modest in the Northern style. But it must have been damned expensive, he thinks. He spends to long trying to figure out the unusual shape of the buttons that go from her wrist to her elbow._

_Realizes too late that they are wolf’s teeth.)_

Talisa leaned over to him, “What a happy party we make.”

He hummed an agreement.

He looked to Sansa again, unintentional, unwitting. This time she was looking back.

\--

_(Heat, that’s all she can think when he looks to her, heat and warmth and fire and hearths and candles and sunshine.)_

\--

“How was your journey, my lady?” He asked Talisa.

“Better than the one North,” Talisa said.

He spread the cheese on his bread, beheading the tiny pressed wolf as he did it, used it to sop the last of his broth, “And, how are you and the Prince?”

“We are well, my lord. Though not as well as we might be.”

He nodded. Paused, bit into his bread, chewed, swallowed, sipped at his cup, finally, “And the Queen?”

Talisa smiled knowingly, patted his arm beneath the table, “She is well, too. Though not as well as she might be either.”

“At least we are all agreed. A nice change from the last time we met.”

He looked to Sansa again, but Jon was telling her something and her face was turned away.

\--

_(With him here, flesh and blood and bone, already it feels like it is that first visit, all over again, already like she’s always searching for him, he always looking to her. Like dust motes, spiraling, revolving, orbiting the other. The space between them thick and knotty._

_But this time she knows._

_And the knowing makes the parting seem so small, so unnecessary.)_

\--

Bronn called something lewd down the table. He did not even hear it entirely but raised his cup in salute anyway.

He could see Sansa hiding her displeasure in a generous bite of bread.

\--

_(She is better than this. She is better than this. She is better than this.)_

\--

After dinner, their party split to their separate chambers, all tired. Tyrion was led to his chamber. It was smaller and plainer than the one usually given to him at Winterfell but clean and warm. A desk had been brought in and pushed against the far wall, stocked with fresh parchment, pots of ink, newly cut quills, crimson sticks of sealing wax lined the edge of the desk like sentinels.

He sat at the desk, considered its contents.

_(It is hard to be angry at Sansa when he sees her. But now, alone, it wells within him.)_

He stood to unbuckle his boots, toed them off, tripping with the effort.

_(His wants rise within him, too._

_He wants a drink._

_He wants a whore._

_He wants his pipe, packed away somewhere._

_Even a bet, a bit of money spilling from his purse, would satisfy him._

_He wants to_ know _, even though he asked her twice before he left._

_These wants, they pockmark his skin like fleabites.)_

He sat again, twirled his quill between his fingers, picked up one of the sticks of wax, rolled it between his fingers.

_(Flea bites itch. Demand to be scratched.)_

Rapped his knuckles on the table, pulled on his boots, and left his chamber.

\--

_(Her mother takes a raspberry tart off the platter before everyone has filled their plate. She does not have one—far too sweet for her liking.)_

\--

She went to the library for a book. Truly.

She liked the way the fire felt. Truly.

She was not tired. Truly.

_(“Pathetic, sweetling,” Petyr says, “I mean, really.”)_

“Couldn’t sleep?” It was Tyrion.

_(If it was six months ago, then she would reached out her hand and he would have come to her._

_It feels like they’ve started all over again.)_

“I can never sleep in strange places,” she said.

“How very Northern of you,” he said, coming into the library more fully, the light reflecting on slopes of his face and she just wanted—

He took the chair next to her, propped his feet up on the stool, “Though, to be fair, you just don’t sleep, Sansa.”

_(“Let me help you relax,” he growls.)_

She let it stand. A beat. Then, “Why are you here, Lord Tyrion?”

His lips quirked, “I needed something to read.”

“You must have the entire contents of this library at home?”

“You overestimate me.”

She rolled her eyes and he said, very seriously, intently, “Playing the idiot, Sansa, is a bit out of style.”

_(“What would happen if I just—”_

_“Oh, Sansa, you know exactly what you’re doing.”)_

He got up, went to the bookshelf. She ignored him, concentrated on her own book, when he made his way back, she asked, “What are you reading?”

“History of Valyria.” He stood in front of her now, book in hand.

“Would you read it to me?”

_(“Read to me, darling.”)_

Tyrion took a step closer to her, “Do you think that’s a very good idea, Your Grace?”

She shook her head. He took another step closer, stops at the edge of her knees, she could feel the heat radiating off his body—

_(“No, not yet you’re warm!” she giggles._

_“You think snow is warm.” But still he stays.)_

His voice lower than a rumble, “You looked very pretty today.”

_(He knows the way she shifts when he praises her, knows the way it darkens her eyes, the way it makes her lean forward.)_

“Thank you, my lord.” She was suddenly very, very warm. Hyperaware of everything outside her body, the flicker of the hearth suddenly dizzying, air suddenly thick, upholstery suddenly rough.

“You looked like the Maiden in that gown.”

She breathed a laugh, “That was rather the point.”

“More than that, though,” His _voice,_ “You looked so _virginal_ —”

_(If she moves her leg, she could hook it about his hips, press her heel into his back, nudge him forward.)_

“Are you trying to seduce me, my lord?”

His eyes twinkled, “Is it working?”

She cannot lie, nodded.

He dragged a finger across her clavicle, “There aren’t any guards outside.”

“Tyrion—”

“No guards, no one saw me enter, did anyone see you enter?”

“If they were spies, I wouldn’t know, would I?” Looped her arms loosely about his shoulders anyway.

“Between Varys and your brother, do you really think that we don’t know every,” finger draws a line down, between her breasts, “single,” down her stomach, “secret in the South. And the North. And everywhere really.”

“You didn’t know Robb was alive.”

“Well. _Almost_ every single secret everywhere.”

“That’s rather less impressive.” Makes him laugh, “We said we would stop.” The defense sounded weak. But his finger stopped, right under her belly button.

“What do you want, Sansa?”

_(He_ knows _what that does to her.)_

“Does that matter really, when it comes to my country’s welfare?”

_(“I want you,” she says, “Tyrion, don’t do that!” Takes his face in her hands, forces him to look at her, “Please. I want you.”_

_Drags his hand between her legs. He hesitates, “Darling—”_

_“Please, Tyrion.”)_

“It matters to me.”

_(Oh, that wrecks her.)_

“My lords wouldn’t approve.”

“Your lords aren’t _here._ ”

_(It’s an excellent point.)_

_(She could make him stay, she thinks, they could fix it. All of it.)_

Tilted forward. His hand went the crease of her hip. And the way he looked—

_(It would feel so good and so natural. He is so good to her. It makes her want to be good to him, too._

_Then thinks no guards, no moon tea—)_

Leaned forward, slowly, intentionally, forehead pressed to his, “No guards mean that anyone could walk in.”

_(Fleabites burn if they’re scratched too much.)_

He pulled away and she felt cold, sighed, “You’re right.”

“This place will be crawling with Iron Bank representatives,” stroked her fingers along the collar of his nightshirt, “We need to get this right.”

Mouth twists sadly, smiling, “We do need to get this right,” he reached for her hand, kissed it, “It’s a shame. You were quite lovely today.”

_(Unspoken: And so, their watch continues.)_

“There will be other days, my lord.”

_(Unspoken: All watches end, one way or another.)_

“Do you regret it?” he asked quietly.

_(It is the closest they can come to discussing it. Secrets aren’t meant to be spoken of.)_

She squeezed his hand, it was not enough, “I would do it again.”

“Alright,” he kissed her hand again, “I’ll see you on the morrow, Your Grace.”

\--

_(She looks to her left and is startled to see Petyr._

_He does not say a thing._

_Just looks.)_

_\--_

_(She cannot help but wonder how long it will be before she breaks. Takes a bite.)_

_\--_

_(Three days, that’s all.)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if anyone's interested in what it's like to put my nephew to bed... pls see the above. ;D 
> 
> chapter title from the act ii song, "Our Lady of the Underground" :) 
> 
> hope everyone is well and staying safe! :* 
> 
> <3<3<3


	4. strange is the call of this strange man (you'd shine like a diamond down in the mine)

_(When she wakes, Petyr is beside her._

_When she dines, Petyr steals segments of orange, breadcrumbs, a bit of turnip._

_When she works, he scans her writing, checks her arithmetic._

_When she speaks, he traces the arch of her mouth, hooks his finger on the fencing of her lower teeth, tugs open her jaw: “Speak up, sweetling. Spill those diamonds.”)_

\--

Tyrion woke early. The morning meal was quiet. He sat with Bran and Davos. Tyrion watched Bran watch the hall while he and Davos discussed the state of the gold mines, a matter of perpetual concern.

Sansa was there, too, but they did not speak.

\--

_(She goes to him before she kills him. Asks him some routine questions about the amount of men he still has with him, their rations, will save her time later from having to count herself._

_Then she makes to leave, he stops her with a touch to her elbow. They are just about the same height, maybe a half-inch difference, not enough to really notice until they stand like this, face to face._

_His face looks a little strange and she thinks in a panic,_ He knows. He knows and he will flee. He knows and he will kill me first.

_But he says, “Sweetling, you will make a wonderful queen.”_

_Feels like he is making a betrothal, like he has taken her silence as an affirmation. She pities him._

_“Goodbye, Petyr.”_

_He smiled, “I will see you soon, Sansa.”)_

\--

Halfway through the morning, she decided she wanted to change her hair.

“It looked beautiful before,” Catelyn said, even as she opened the vial of hair oil, “Very elegant.”

“I looked like a Southerner.”

Catelyn did not say anything to that, merely unplaited her braids and combed through her hair, “If you wanted me to do this, I wish you had decided before you dried your hair.”

They fell silent. Catelyn, as usual, broke it, “You were not at the training yard this morning.”

“I slept in.”

_(They both know that’s a lie.)_

“She knows you are mad at her.”

“I am not—”

“Sansa.”

“I am not!”

Catelyn fell silent, pinned her braid back, “Is that better?”

Sansa turned her head, “Yes. Can you braid the front?”

Catelyn nodded, picked up the brush, “Have you spoken to Lord Tyrion?”

_(“Are you trying to seduce me, my lord?”_

_“Is it working?”)_

“No,” she said coolly.

 _(Oh, when he left, did she rage against him, too. How_ dare _he. Cannot look at him at the morning meal. Cannot stand it. Not when they made a choice together—not when it was him who_ refused _—can’t think on that either.)_

Catelyn did not say anything to that either, mere tugged a little to readjust the braid’s position, “Bran is different than I thought.”

_(I told you, she thinks.)_

_(Then she thinks that that is unkind.)_

“He can take some adjustment. It is easier to speak to him in letters,” Sansa said, “In person—”

“He’s quiet. Well, he always was, I suppose. Compared to Rickon.”

_(She knows what she means though. It was the vacancies between his words, the chasms between sentences, where all the secrets of the world lived.)_

“It gets easier,” Sansa said quietly, reached for her mother’s hand over her shoulder, “With Bran, I mean.”

Catelyn smiled with forced brightness, “Of course it will. It has been a long time. We just need to get reacquainted.”

Sansa nodded and Catelyn examined her work, “What do you think?”

Sansa nodded, “Yes, better.”

Catelyn pressed a kiss to her hair, “Speak to your sister.”

\--

_(_ _Eight years ago: “I need Arya,” she tells Petyr. They are in her solar —well, Jon’s really—and she is bent over the maps of the Northern houses._

_It has been a day since he told her that he saw them together, on the throne. It’s a pretty picture indeed. A distracting one._

_“You don’t need anyone, sweetling,” he says, comes up behind her, put his hands on her waist. She wonders if it feels good, feels like it should, like it would, “Just you and I. That’s all you need. You and I.”)_

\--

She went to Bran as soon as she was finished dressing for the arrival. He was in the godswood under the blooming weirwood.

“Hello, Sansa,” he said, eyes still closed.

_(Arya had never wanted to be held or doted on—even as an infant, always on the move, crawled the earliest of any of them, pulling down playthings on top of her, toddling away from the nurses. Rickon had always been colicky, attached to Mother’s hip more than anyone, even Father._

_But Bran—Bran had been hers._

_He had climbed walls and roofs, to be sure, but he had also curled up against her at night when the shadows grew too close, bestowed her with kisses, played knight to her lady.)_

“Bran,” she said. She stood before him. He would not open his eyes. So, she continued, “Did you know?”

“About Robb and Mother?” He did open his eyes at that, “No. Not until they entered the North. I hadn’t thought to look.”

_(There’s a new bond between them now. Twin crowns, twin thrones. A burden only the other can understand. They leave the dirtiness of being neighbors, rubbing up against each other, for Tyrion and her to sort out. Leave the other alone.)_

“Are you prepared for the Iron Bank this afternoon?” She asked.

Bran shrugged slightly, “There is only so much we can prepare. It is time to let the plan play out.”

She raised an eyebrow, “I suppose it is easy to be so—” she searched for the word, “ _relaxed_ when you have all the world at your fingertips.”

Bran’s lips quirked. Smile or grimace, she could not tell, “Some days.”

“Mother will want to sit with you again at dinner,” she said.

“That is why I am here this morning,” Bran said, sounded like a sigh, “It is her right, I suppose.” 

_(His weariness makes him look old. She always forgets that he is a man now. Not her baby anymore._

_Rickon stays three in her head.)_

Sansa resisted the urge to step forward and brush the hair from his brow, “It is almost time.”

Bran nodded, leaned back, sounded a little distant, a little faint, “I will be along soon.”

She turned and began to leave when he called, “Sansa,” she looked back, he looked almost asleep, but he said, “I meant what I wrote to you.”

“Bran—”

But his eyes had gone pearlescent and he was lost to her.

\--

_(She will not mourn him when he’s gone, she promises it to herself. She will_ not _._

_Before they buried his body, somewhere beyond the godswood, she does not ask where, she takes his pin. Well, she has Arya get it for her. Arya doesn’t ask, merely drops on her bed like a headhunter’s trophy. She puts it in the drawer of the desk in her—well, still Jon’s—solar, the secret one._

_Then she never looks at it again.)_

\--

Tyrion was quite pleased with the way the Starks looked, if he did say so himself. Standing on the steps of Widow’s Watch, they looked like a myth, like the carvings he had seen on the broken pediments scattered on the cracked banks of Old Valyria. Jon Snow, solemn as ever, dressed in oppressive black, Ghost, baring monstrous teeth, pacing about his legs, then Bran, the back of his chair carved to look like a smaller version of his throne, backed with a spray of wooden raven’s feathers, unnerving and silent, and then Sansa between them, dressed in a high-necked gown of white oiled silk, as he gathered was now her custom, actually glowing in the noonday sun. 

He and Robb stood to the side, watching as the Bankers came up the slope, like oversized flies drifting by on a summer day.

The youngest of the trio came forward, graciously—

_(Obsequiously.)_

\--bowing. Sansa stepped forward, extending her hand, which he kissed.

“He proposed marriage to her once,” Robb murmured.

 _(He_ had _wondered which of the three it was.)_

Tyrion raised an eyebrow, “A lofty goal.”

“She refused him,” Robb said.

“Well, she got married.”

Sansa was smiling at the man, celestial, offering her arm to help lead him into the hall to greet their hosts.

“Aye, though that has not stopped his offers,” Robb said.

“Why are you telling me this, my prince?”

“Because, Lord Hand,” Robb said, finally looking down to meet his gaze, “we are your allies in this matter and it might help you in whatever game you intend to play,” he caught the steward’s signal to process inside, nodded to acknowledge it, “Besides, my lord, if it was me, I would want to know.”

\--

_(Ten years ago: “You need to smile more, sweetling,” Petyr says, between clenched teeth, “Harry Hardyng—”_

_“I don’t like him, Uncle Petyr.”_

_She’s still calling him that. It’s that delicate time right after they killed Lysa—still in the Vale, at Petyr’s knee, at Robyn’s beck and call—_

_“I need information, sweetling, and Harry needs a pretty girl,” he has the tone of a septon and a father and a whoremonger, all at once, “And you’re so good at it, Alayne.”_

_She sighs._

_That’s Petyr’s way: Nip, then soothe. Nip, then soothe.)_

\--

They all dined together on fish steamed with herbs, greens topped with radishes and carrots, hot bread.

“We will let you rest,” Lady Flint said, “The meetings will begin tomorrow afternoon.” 

The Iron Bank nodded as one. The young one, the handsome one, asked about the godswood. Lady Flint answered.

Tyrion stared at them; head cocked.

“You really should learn their names,” Sansa said to him to through her teeth, smiled to the Iron Bankers.

“Why? I see no difference between them, they all just sit and jangle coin at me like I’m a dancing girl. I mean it’s flattering, in its way—”

She scoffed slightly, smiled again at the Iron Bank, “You are _such_ a Lannister.”

_(Oh, he just wants to—)_

\--

_(Eight years ago:_

_Later when Petyr leaves her alone with her maps, she realizes:_

_Heady, she feels heady. And wanted. She feels that too. Slips_ that _on like an old cloak._

_It’s been so very long since Robert Baratheon tweaked her nose and said “Just right for my son, I think,” and so very long since Joffrey gave her a necklace and so very long since Sandor asked her to sing for him and so very long since Petyr pushed Lysa through the Moon-Door._

_Wonders if those felt good, too. She can’t remember.)_

\--

The Flints had a small godswood. Like at Winterfell, it bordered their glass gardens, edging the estate. She went there immediately afterwards, weaving through the trees—

_(Petyr walks with her, of course, drills her like Maester Wolkan does the castle children: “Smile, not too much, don’t show your teeth. Straight posture, you’re not a serving girl. Your best feature is your legs, but he can’t see that, so your breasts will have to do, sweetling, can’t you tug that down? Don’t mention the brother.”)_

Spring had carpeted the wood in a violence of purple: sturdy bear’s breech and fat, bursting thistles, wild violets and fragrant lavender. She took care, stepping delicately over them.

_(“Do you remember the Essosi story of the man who stepped on the purple carpet of the gods?” Petyr asks, in that way that tells her he’s about to jape, helping her over a nestled patch of forget-me-nots, “He got his throat cut.”_

_“That’s crude, coming from you,” she tells him._

_“You never did have a sense of humor,” he sighs.)_

She liked the shade, the cool, slipping shadows.

_(“I like Bran,” she tells Petyr, “I mean he’s—”_

_“Difficult?” Petyr wrapped his arm about her shoulders. Fraternal. She misses Robb suddenly. Wishes that she told him that she was here._

_“No—just, I think he’s a better king than he lets on,” she said, “Tyrion likes him.”_

_“Tyrion likes anyone who likes him,” Petyr said, “Terribly clever but not a great judge of character, that one.”)_

A tiny gnat buzzed by, nipped at her hand. It _hurt_ , so badly, that she slapped it away, exclaimed aloud.

_(“Hush, girl,” he tells her._

_“Don’t call me girl. And that hurt. It will swell for sure.”_

_“Don’t get insolent, it’s unattractive,” Petyr tells her, “Hurry up, you’ll miss your entrance.”)_

She saw him through the trees. Caspar. He was younger than the other Iron Bankers, not unattractive.

She moved swiftly now, circled behind him—

_(“Slow, slow down,” Petyr murmurs, “Good girl. And—go.”)_

“Caspar?” she called.

He turned. In the dappled light, not unattractive at all. He seemed surprised to see her, “Oh, Your Grace, my apologies.”

“No need,” she said, “The godswood is a place for solitude. _My_ apologies for having interrupted your meditation.”

“No, no, I was just—I so enjoyed hearing about these places in your letters.”

She looked up at the laced canopy of tree branches, “They are beautiful, in their own way.”

He nodded, scuffed his shoe in the dirt, “Would you care to join me?”

She looked around as if to check for any intruders, “Oh, well,” teetered on the edge of indecision, then smiled again, beatifically, “Of course.” Took his arms, “Do you have these flowers in Braavos?”

\--

_(Ten years ago: “Lovely,” Petyr tells her after the feast, after Harry has told her what he needed to hear, “I am so proud, sweetling.”_

_She glows.)_

_\--_

Before she went to her chambers for sleep, she and Robb met again in the Flints’ solar, reviewed the numbers, what she was to say the next day.

Before he left, he said, “Have you met any of the bankers yet? I sat with Bartholomew at supper—terrible bore.”

She shook her head, “No. I did not get the chance this afternoon. I don’t want them to think that I will be too friendly.”

Robb nodded, “Good tactic.” 

She sighed, “We will see how it goes.”

He patted her shoulder, “Good night, Sansa.”

“Good night, Robb.”

\--

_(She feels a sick swell of satisfaction when she undresses for bed and her palm has welted with the gnat’s bite._

_“See?” she tells Petyr, turns to show him, “I told you it would leave a mark.”)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from the act i song "Hey Little Songbird." The full lyrics that I pulled from are "Strange is the call of this strange man/  
> I wanna fly down and feed at his hand" and then from the next verse "You'd shine like a diamond down in the mine/And the choice is yours if you're willing to choose"
> 
> ANYWAY, the story that Petyr references is from The Oresteia, a cycle of Greek plays by Aeschylus, about Agamemnon's family, Helen of Troy's bro-in-law. In the first play, Agamemnon returns from the Trojan war and his wife, Clytemnestra, who is plotting to kill him and his slave, the Princess Cassandra, sets out purple (or also, depending on the adaptation, red) robes for him to walk on into his palace to his death. Agamemnon, in a Baelish-sized bit of hubris, is like "lol, okay, you weirdo." And then Clytemnestra kills him in his bath tub. Anyway, it's like one of my favorite pieces of literature and it always, always, always ends up somehow in one of my stories. 
> 
> Hope everyone is well and staying safe. <3 Thank you for reading. :)


	5. but now i wanna hold you (say that the wind won't change on us and that it will always be like this)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alternate title: exactly 5050 words of pining. enjoy.

_(When he comes home, from this past trip, he is in a rush. There is so much to_ do _and he is so, so, so uncharacteristically determined to not to let what happened at the North change how he acts in the South. They left each other for a reason, he tells himself, it was the right thing to do. They are not the twins; they are not Jon and Dany. They’re not Robb and Talisa, for that matter. It was always going to be a tragedy, or hadn’t you heard?_

_He journeys hard, compresses the three-week journey to nearly two, drives his poor men to near collapse. He wakes the next day in his wide, soft bed in his big, opulent chambers, in so much pain, he cannot move from his bed. Stiff, heavy, weak. He can barely stand. Summons a bath. Does him little good._

_He is abed for nearly two days._

_Galladon comes to see him, bounds to his room, jumps on his bed, which causes his legs to_ twinge _like nothing else and he roars at the poor boy. Sounds like Tywin. Makes Gal cry. Has to apologize:_

I’m so, so, so, sorry, sweet boy. It just hurt me. I know you didn’t mean it. I am so, so sorry. Please don’t go. Please don’t go. _)_

\--

That evening, Tyrion joined Brienne in putting Galladon to bed. He was bouncing tonight, giddy at the new arrivals, at the sight of Jon and Arya and Brienne and Robb, all training in the yard that morning—

“She killed the Night King!” he exclaimed, leaping from his bed, brandishing an invisible knife.

_(He almost calls him Tommen—still does that, all these years later, stops himself just in time.)_

“Yes,” Brienne said, wearily, “And then she slept.”

When the boy had finally settled to snoring, he and Brienne sat beside him—

_(They are not natural allies but Galladon is a golden link between the two of them, their love for this small boy. They have forged other bonds since the War, more links that lace about them like a maester’s chain—Bran and Sansa and the Small Council and a surprising mutual fondness for Dornish food and Jaime, always Jaime—but Galladon, he is what makes them family.)_

\--and spoke.

Brienne started: “I spoke with Lady Catelyn this afternoon. I didn’t get a chance the first night.”

Tyrion hummed, “I am sure she was pleased to see you.”

“She seemed—” Brienne shook her head, “Different.” She shook her head, “Distant. Not that we were ever friends but I—”

_(Brienne is like him. Ugly people who love beautiful, unreachable things—they love cruel sisters, Kingslayers, not-quite-kings who love knights, married queens and their noble mothers—then are constantly surprised when they are left alone at the end of it all. They are meant to worship, she and him, not meant to have._

_That’s a terribly sad thought, he knows Sansa would tell him, and not the least bit true, Tyrion Lannister._

_She doesn’t know what she speaks of, his beautiful—former—wife. But still. He keeps it to himself.)_

“I wouldn’t think on it. It has been a hard time for her.”

Brienne nodded, “I just had hoped—”

Tyrion nodded, “I know what you mean.”

Soon, Brienne shooed him away. Had promised to train with Arya at dawn. Would try again with Lady Catelyn on the morrow.

So, he left her and Galladon. He found Jon instead.

\--

_(Jon’s truth is still a secret, locked away between the precious few who were there those first days—Tyrion, waxy and pale-faced, seeming truly small for the first time since she had known him, begging, begging, begging Jon:_

_“Please, Jon, take the throne. Let me help you. Together. We’ll rule together.”_

_It was one of those things that, right after the War—like her annulment and the forging of Bran’s throne—had seemed so vital, so important, that as the years have waxed and waned and winter come and gone, has faded to a distant remembrance, a strange fact from another life._

_Still, she finds herself in Tyrion’s position, not on her knees but begging him all the same: “Tell them, Jon, Robb deserves to know.”)_

\--

Jon was in good spirits.

“Come, Tyrion,” he said when he came across him in the hall, “Let’s have a drink like we used to do.”

_(Before I fucked Daenerys. That is what he means.)_

He declined a drink—

_(Davos won’t like it and Sansa—he just—)_

\--but pulled out his pipe, puffed a fragrant cloud, “So, how are you?”

Jon smiled—

_(Oh, that is a lovely thing. To see Jon Snow at peace, resting. Feels like an honor.)_

“We are well. Though I’ve been down South so much this year. Jarl misses me.”

_(Ah, yes, Jarl. The wildling boy that Jon took to his bed. He had seen him once, strong-looking lad, sandy-haired and ruddy, at that conference four years ago. Sansa had pointed him out across a crowd, whispered, “He loves him.”_

_“That’s Jon’s way, the boy will always be in love with someone,” it sounded mean in a way he did not intend, tried to make it better, “I am glad.”_

_She sighed, “Me too. He is a good man, Jarl,” she furrowed her brow, “Although frankly, I would be happy with anyone without dragons.”_

_That makes Tyrion laugh._

_That day feels like they all got happy endings.)_

“Well, you’ve had a brother return from the dead. That feels like reason enough.”

Jon nodded, “I write to Robb as often as I can.”

“Good,” he said, “He needs a friend.” 

“He was not…happy with me when I departed.”

Tyrion laughed mirthlessly, “Well, he was not happy with any of you when I last saw him.”

“I worry for him,” Jon said, “I worry for him and Sansa.”

“You always worry for her,” Tyrion said, sucked on his pipe, “You always have.”

“The election was so—”

“Revealing?” Tyrion supplied. His pipe burnt down, tapped out the ash in the bowl. Jon didn’t answer, looked to the dregs of his cup. Tyrion considered him, asked, “Have you told them?”

Jon looked up.

_(That startled look. Like Ned Stark in the right light.)_

Finally: “No, I have not.”

Tyrion thought it best not to pursue it. They fell silent again. Jon broke it next, “It must hurt to see her again.”

He looked to the bastard boy—

_(If it was anyone else, he would suspect that he was being jabbed back, hurt for inquiring too deeply, treading carelessly on tender flesh. But it’s Jon, and he’s just so good.)_

\--responded: “Aye.” Scrubbed at his beard, tapped the bowl of his pipe harder, “Duty is the death of love and all that.”

“No, it’s not,” Jon said. Resolute. 

_(Thinks of Sansa in the library, think of Sansa greeting the Iron Bank, thinks of her in his bed—_

_Jon can be a surprisingly insightful friend.)_

He refilled his pipe, lit it, let the furls of smoke fill his lungs, dull the edges of it all for a moment. Breathed it all out. Like a dragon. Said: “No. You’re right, it’s not.”

\--

_(She goes to sleep. Petyr doesn’t move. Never moves. Never sleeps. Never leaves her head, her bed. Lives there now._

_Her hand hurts.)_

\--

They did meet in the afternoon and Tyrion did remember—

_(It’s not that he didn’t_ remember _them, it was a tactic to disarm them, to confuse them, a well-used tactic, one that she had used herself if the stories about her deals with the merchants’ guild were to be believed, to show the strength of the—Never mind.)_

It was another picture so well composed that Tyrion could have painted it. Lord and Lady Flint’s solar was small but was dominated by a table constructed of roughhewn driftwood. Sansa sat at the one head of the table, Lady Flint and Robb flanking her. Bran was wheeled to the other end, with Bronn and Tyrion beside him.

The Iron Bank—Janos, Bartholomew, Caspar, see?—sat caged between the two countries.

Sansa began, “I would like to welcome the representatives of the Iron Bank to our shores. You have brought a very interesting proposal to us—one that involves both my brother and I and the past of our two separate countries. We have agreed to meet as working partners to resolve this issue with the full understanding that as separate entities we may reach differing conclusions as to your purposes here. I open the floor to my brother for further greeting.”

Bran smiled slightly, then looked to Bronn, who leaned forward and said, “So, you want to open a fucking Bank of Westeros?”

\--

_(Trying to avoid him, it seems it is harder than just being. It is so hard because it feels like, as they meet, as they pry open the negotiations, like they are dancing._

_She opens the floor and Bronn set them off and the Iron Bank spreads their proposals before them._

_A Bank on the continent, available for any government need, a third partner in the newly founded whale oil trade, a seat on their Small Councils, a payment plan for debts held by the North because of some fortifications authorized by one Petyr Baelish,—_

_“My apologies, Your Grace,” Petyr says. Does not sound sorry at all._

_Then it begins. They work together, her and him, unknitting the Bank’s proposals, pulling apart their calculation, piercing hole after hole after hole, objection after objection. It is so well choreographed, slicing the Bank down line by line._

_She dithers and he pushes. She sighs and he shouts. She bites her lip like she just does not know_ what _to do and he strokes his beard like he is taking in every word. She smiles prettily at Caspar and he looks to Janos when he speaks of trade routes._

_It’s so elegant._

_Bronn and Bran and Robb and Lady Flint sit back, interjecting occasionally._

_When the Bank leaves, she is a little flush. He is bright._

_There is no greater rush, she thinks, no more potent drink or drug in all of Westeros than playing the game._

_Oh, and the way he is looking to her. For all that he has done, he just might agree.)_

\--

“So, what did you think of them in the flesh?” Tyrion asked, reclining in his chair, packing his pipe full of that stinking grass he insisted on carrying around in his pocket.

“I was not convinced at all,” Sansa said, wrinkled her nose at him, “They’re in trouble.”

“So we proceed as planned?”

She nodded. 

“Alright,” Tyrion said, “Though their investment in the whale oil could be valuable.”

“And comes at a price.”

Tyrion smiled condescendingly, “Well, everything comes at a price.”

_(He does not catch the irony until it is too late, he tries to keep it from slipping through his fingers. She looks at him as if she is holding his blunder in her palm and hands it back to him. Kindly.)_

“And if it all goes to plan,” she said, “They _will_ be investing in whale oil.”

He laughed, “Is that how you will phrase it to them?”

Sansa hummed, then said, “Do you want to dine here? We could organize the agenda for the next meeting.”

He nodded, stretching his arms over his head, wincing slightly, “I’ll send for Bronn. Should we summon Prince Robb?”

She shuffled her papers, “I do not know if that will be necessary.”

Tyrion considered her a moment, thought about telling her that it was a mistake, but nodded, “Alright.”

She sighed, “I will have to send a raven to Lord Manderly.”

“And why is he not here?” Tyrion asked casually.

She fixed him with a hard gaze, “He knows that trust must be earned again.”

“You sound like a mother to a naughty child,” Tyrion said.

Sansa leaned back, closed her eyes, “It certainly feels like that some days.”

“Mayhap that could be your next iteration, the Mother of the North,” he said, lighting his pipe with one of the stubby candles on the table, ignored her glare, the tightness of her body, took a long, sweet drag, “You would look wonderful in a wimple.”

_(He is arrogant, this man of hers, would give his head for a jape.)_

Sansa arced an eyebrow, “Excuse me?”

They stared at each other before Tyrion said quietly, firmly, “You know what I mean, Sansa.”

“I am sure I do not, Lord Hand.”

_(Oh that’s right, he thinks, with no small measure of rancor, we’re pretending.)_

“My apologies, Your Grace,” Tyrion paused, “I was only teasing,” reached for her hand, “We are still friends, Sansa, friends can tease, can they not?”

_(Four years ago: Pulling a gown from her shoulders, whimpering to him, “Darling,_ please—”

_Kissing down her stomach, nosing the angry red ridges left by her corset, the bite of her stays. They always bother him, she knows, can tell in the way he tries to soothe them with his tongue._

_“Stop teasing, Tyrion,” she moans.)_

_(She wonders if they will ever be able to exorcise those remembrances, sitting between them like joyful ghosts.)_

She moved her hand from under his, but patted his to reassure him, “We have always been friends.”

He got up, pipe dangling from his mouth, grimacing at the pain in his hips, the soreness in his knees.

“Are you in pain?” she asked.

_(This is her battle: She always wants to help. He never wants her. Growls, snaps, roars, bites at her._

_Two years ago: “I can make you feel good,” she murmurs._

_“And how much coin will you require, Your Grace?”)_

“Only stiff,” he said through ground teeth.

“I brought rosemary oil—”

“Sansa, I don’t need—”

“Tyrion, I’m just—”

“I know—”

“If you’re in pain—”

“I have dealt with—”

“Sweetheart—”

_(Now it is her who has blundered. But he will not hand it back to her. Collects it, pinches it in between his fingers.)_

“Stop,” Tyrion said, “We took this wound with grace, Sansa, let’s not twist the knife.”

_(She thinks that he has always been so righteous in the light of day.)_

Sansa bit her lip, “Let me give you the oil.”

“Sansa—”

“We are friends, are we not?”

_(“I love you. I am in love with you. I love you.”)_

Tyrion sighed, “I am always losing to you.”

She almost laughed, “How strange—I am always losing to you.”

_(It is as good a peace as they will get today.)_

\--

They take supper early, with the sun still hanging low in the sky.

In the hall, she searched out Caspar, made sitting next to him seem like an accident, “Oh, Caspar—I mean Lord Caspar, how was the rest of your day?”

“Oh, good. I sought out the book you recommended,” Caspar said, “On farming methods.”

_(He’s dull, thinks himself a jester, talks too much for Sansa—_

_“Really? That’s ironic,” Petyr says skeptically, leaning over her chair, “Given who you did take to bed.”_

_\--but he has just the prettiest jaw she has ever seen. She tries to concentrate on that.)_

She turned to look at the rest of the hall. Caught Bran’s eye.

_(Catelyn is beside him, her hand clutching the hard arm of his chair, speaking low. But he is looking to her._

_I am carrying out the plan, she tries to tell him with her gaze. Uphold your end, brother.)_

\--

The Iron Bank officials were generally early to retire which suited Sansa just fine. She did not sleep and neither did Tyrion (or Davos or Bronn, for that matter)—

_(She wonders if there was some prerequisite for Bran’s council—they all must be haunted insomniacs, afraid of lonely chambers.)_

She had been given the Flints’ chamber and solar and that was where Bronn and Tyrion came. Bronn lolled on the broad sill of the window, wine cup dangling from his hands. Tyrion stood beside where she sat—

_(It’s his knees, she cannot help but worry, that is why he will not sit.)_

\--thumbing through the generous sheafs of his scrawled calculations and her neat, tight columns of notes—

“It is a matter of making them desperate, that’s all,” Tyrion was saying.

She sat at the head of the table, drumming her fingers, “No promises. If we lie, there are grounds for war.”

“Apologies, Your Grace,” Bronn said, “but if the Iron Bank wants a war, they will have a war.”

Tyrion said, “They would be ambitious indeed to wage two wars on two continents.”

“Fine but until Norvos is decided, it would be unwise to antagonize them,” she said, “Besides, it will—”

“Make them look foolish. Weaken their cause,” Tyrion nodded, rapped his knuckles on the table.

She nodded, “Which means for my part to work, you will need to be successful.”

“I am offended by your lack of faith in us,” Bronn said, took a sip of his cup. 

Sansa ignored him, “I think, the key is to emphasize our differences. Make them think that they can salvage half of a deal or that they are making progress in both.”

Tyrion sighed, “I will speak to the tall one—”

“Janos.”

Tyrion waved his hand dismissively, smirked at her warning look, “Whatever. Him, in the morning.”

She rose, “Good night, my lords. I will send Arya to you first thing, Lord Hand.”

Bronn rose to kiss her hand, “Good night, Your Grace.”

Tyrion did not, inclined his head in a shadow of what a bow should be, “Good night, Your Grace.”

\--

_(Two years ago: There is a day that Tyrion has a headache, so strong, so severe, that he must retire early from negotiations. It is unlike him and so after she meets with her Small Council, she makes up that she simply must attend to their trade deals, pains or no, and then she goes to him, nervous, unsure, with a vial of lavender essence._

_She does allow him to turn her away. It feels very, very brave somehow. Of both of them._

_“Where did you learn this, Your Grace?” he grunts, as she works her thumbs into the base of his skull, presses, “Fuck, Sansa.” Head falls back to cushion on her breast._

_“My cousin Robyn would get headaches—”_

_“At the Eyrie?”_

_She nodded, dances her fingertips across his temples, tapping, says without thinking, “Petyr taught me.”_

_There’s a silence. They so rarely speak of him. Even though he knows that Petyr kissed her, wanted her, even though he knows that she sees him in the corners._

_She is suddenly very, very afraid._

_“Well, you’re very skilled at it, darling.”_

_Oh._

_She wrapped her arms about his chest, cradles him from behind, kissed his ear, nuzzles his neck._

_Thank you, she wants to say, thank you for being kind._

_But it’s another secret. And secrets are not meant to be spoken aloud. Speaking it makes it real.)_

\--

Arya was out in the yard, overseeing the endless packages and supplies that have been gathered near the training yards—rations and provisions and big wheels of rope. She was consulting a map with Jon, both of them straining to see in the early evening indigo.

She does not see it herself. Does not speak to her herself.

Has Lady Flint do it.

\--

_(He is so, so tired.)_

\--

She had slipped the vial of oil to him at dinner. After that she drifted off to flirt with Caspar.

It sat in his pocket like a stone.

When he goes to see Brienne and Galladon before bed, Brienne complained of a soreness in her muscles, an overextension in her shoulder, a tiredness in her neck.

He pulled the oil from his pocket.

“There,” he told her.

“Where did you get this?” Brienne asked, yawning, examining the bottle.

“Oh, just amongst my things, Sam is always trying something. I heard it works wonders.”

\--

_(When she is done with the lavender oil, they extinguish all the candles, untie the curtains and pull them shut over the windows._

_Their affair is a muffled, whispered thing, bound-up vespertine desire._

_Today, though, they lie together in the middle of the afternoon._

_It is edged with danger, this afternoon, like being naked, he thinks sleepily._

_But with her hand making circles on his back and her fingernails are scoring his nape. Oh, he has led an indulgent life, but this decadence is—_

_“Tyrion,” she says quietly, cutting through the silence._

_He hums at her in response._

_“Isn’t it strange that they got it right?” she says, “That all this time—”_

_Sansa has a part to her, delicate and fragile and well-hidden, that he hopes she never, ever loses. A part that believes in bits of invisible thread that knots spirits together, that believes in one love and predestiny, like in a song. A remnant of girlhood, like the scar on his knee from slipping on the slick sea stacks at the Rock._

_In the beginning, he would go to correct her, argue against her—point out all the times they both have loved and been fooled, loved and been false, loved and been betrayed. But eventually, he feels like he is a battering ram against her goodness, that he’s trying to knock her into being as acrid as him._

_Besides, today, it feels true, like she’s right._

_“Yes, darling, it is.”)_

\--

She did not go to bed.

“Lord Hand,” she said, with some genuine measure of surprise, “I thought you would be abed—”

“Did you really?” Tyrion asked over the rim of his book, not looking up—

_(And this, she thinks, this_ nonchalance, _this is what galls her the most._

_She has taken it all._

_She has borne Robb’s animus, Arya’s desertion, Jeyne’s happiness, Catelyn pecking at her like a mother hen. She had given his bed up, never expected to really lose_ him _though._

_And now here he sits, eyeing her so coolly, like he owns this library, such a Lannister_ —

_He is being unkind. And he has never, ever been unkind to her before. Not truly.)_

“Yes,” she said, acid, “I did.”

He looked her up and down—

_(The seventh time they have sex—they meet in the library, by chance, or maybe not, but just like this—_

_“Shouldn’t we be in a bed?” she says into his mouth. He is in the chair and she in his lap. She is above him, always was in the beginning, and his hands are running all over her, her legs, her hips, bowing her back—and she is warm—)_

_\--_ “Did you finish your Valyrian history already?”

“No, I—”

“Then, why are you _here_?” He sounded so weary, weary of _her_ —

“I could not sleep,” even.

He leaned back, lowered his book, “Me either.”

_(The way he’s looking at her, she knows that look—_

_Well, he has always been so righteous in the light of day. A pity it has turned evening now.)_

“The Iron Bank will be tricky—”

Soothing: “I will speak with Janos in the morning. And Bran has been keeping watch on them. They are not doing well, Sansa. He expects them to battle outside Norvos in the last few days. It will become easier then—” 

“You will let me know when he does?” She looked down at her hands linked together.

“Of course,” Tyrion said.

Did not say more. 

“Did you use the oil?” she asked suddenly, “Does it—”

“Yes, thank you.”

_(Oh, but that shatters her.)_

“You’re lying to me.”

_(If it was anyone else, it would sound angry or accusatory, but it’s Sansa, and she’s just so_ heartbroken. _)_

“Yes,” he said, calmly, “Yes, I am.”

“Why?” she cried, “It would—”

“Sansa, I just—” Tyrion said, stopped, closed his book, pinched the bridge of his nose, screwed his eyes shut, “I cannot—I love you, Sansa—”

“Don’t twist the knife, Tyrion.”

_(There is such space between them now._

_Six months ago, she had waited for him in the rain and come to his chambers and dipped into his bath and kissed his cheek and spread oil on his limbs and made love to him in his bed and then told him of Robb—_

_That is the moment that it began, she thinks, more than the night she told him it had to end or the night before he left or whatever choices he has made since—it was Robb that sealed this tragedy.)_

“We are friends, Sansa, please.”

“Friends don’t _lie_ ,” she said, impatient, “I—I have to go to bed.”

_(She is scared, she wants to say, she is terrified of the shadows and being alone and the darkness and the eternal wait for sleep, for rest that never comes, and Petyr, there, lying in wait for her return._

_But she is so tired of this, too, already. Of this circling, this not-quite-being.)_

“Let there be peace between us, Sansa, the Iron Bank is too important.”

She nodded, a little frantic, “Yes, yes, of course, I will—”

“Good night, Your Grace.”

“Good night, Lord Hand.”

\--

_(They lay together until evening, wreathed in lavender—_

_“We should go to supper,” she murmurs, “People will talk.”_

_“They already do.”_

_That stiffens her, makes her arms and legs, so loose, constrict._

_He runs his hand down her side, “Sansa, Sansa, Sansa.”_

_She loves his voice, loves how he chants her name like it’s a hymn, it softens her._

_“Let me help you relax,” he says into her shoulder, “Let me.”)_

\--

She saw Jon on her way back to her chambers, him stumbling a bit to his—

_(He looks brooding, brooding in a way that he has not in years. He looks like a younger version of himself, like—)_

“You’re like a ghost, brother.”

He laughed a little at that. Then: “I saw you speaking with Caspar.”

“Yes.”

“Does Tyrion know?”

She smirked a little at that, “It was his idea.”

“Oh,” Jon said, a little knowing, a little sad.

_(Only Jon, noble Jon, could make her feel so unsteady.)_

She bid him goodnight, went to pass him, when Jon caught her arm, “Did you know he’s a bastard? Caspar?”

She was almost certain that she had been the one that told him that, “Yes.”

“His father legitimized him when he was a boy and he was raised with his brother, together. Given an education.”

“And now his brother has betrayed him.”

Jon snorted, “Ironic. That the trueborn son should seek destroy while the bastard inherits it all.”

“Not so unexpected though. Bran told me that the brother always resented him, resented his father for bringing him home.”

“Father would never have allowed that,” Jon said, “He never would have allowed—”

_(She thinks of Mother, doesn’t say it._

_Thinks of all the things that she’s done, does, that their father wouldn’t have allowed.)_

He trailed off, shook his head, “Good night, Sansa.”

“Jon—”

_(You never_ were _a bastard.)_

He kissed her cheek and left her.

\--

_(He helps her relax._

_And afterwards, when they have returned to drowsing, pressed so close, like they could weave themselves together, she says, “If the wrong people knew—”_

_“It is not safe, what we’re doing,” he agrees._

_He was a lonely boy, played mostly on his own. He liked games. Put his hand too close to candleflame, stood with the point of his toes off the cliffs below the Rock, flirting with the precipice, testing, testing, testing._

_“We should stop,” she says, panic in her voice, “We should have stopped years ago. This is so irresponsible—”_

_“What do you want, Sansa?” he asks her, cuts her off, “You are queen. Take what you want.”)_

\--

After Sansa left and he had settled back to read, to try to put her face from his mind, Arya entered.

_(Fuck the Starks, he thinks, damn them all.)_

“She is angry at you,” she said without preamble.

“Aye,” he said, trying to concentrate on his book, “And how long did you stand outside the library door to gather that?”

“She is angry with me, too.”

That made him look up, “Is it the voyage?”

“What else?” Arya huffed a little, rolled her shoulders, “Though she will not say, she is _so_ passive-aggressive—”

“She is terrified,” Tyrion said, shutting his book with a snap for the second time, “She is terrified to lose you.”

“I know that,” Arya snapped, “But she doesn’t have to be like this.”

“Perhaps not,” Tyrion sighed.

Arya scuffed the toe of her boot, “Why is she angry with you?”

_(She says it like it is a kinship.)_

“Oh,” he said, airily, waved his hand, dismissing it all, “This whole Iron Bank affair is so tense.”

Arya eyed him like she knew he was lying but let it hang in the air, “I will come to you in the morning with the dagger.”

“I look forward to it, Captain Stark.”

She snorted something like a laugh and left him.

\--

_(Skirts closer to the edge, heightens the fall. Testing, testing, testing._

_She is good for him, he thinks, as good for him as he is bad for her.)_

\--

When she arrived at her chambers, she had to answer correspondence, sort through the papers that she would have resealed and given to Robb, plan for the next day’s walk with Caspar.

She worked and worked and worked until she could see that the moon was slipping below the horizon.

Then she crawled into bed and fell asleep.

\--

_(She wonders vaguely, as he guides her to sit astride his thighs, as he does wonderful things to her breasts, tosses his head back as she drags her nails,_ hard _, down his chest, as he babbles his desire for her, begs her to take him, fuck him, if that’s what she wants, tells her that he loves her, more than anyone, that she is good and sweet and kind, that she is the most perfect creature in all the world, seems to mean it, believes his own devotions, if this is what drove Daenerys to madness—_

_Oh._ Oh.

_It feels good.)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from act i song: "All I've Ever Known" 
> 
> Between a new job, (lovely) family stuff, and like the fact that my country is imploding, it has been (and will be) a cuckoo-bananas few weeks over in my corner of the world...but 5K-long chapters consisting solely of self-indulgent angsty pining makes it all feel manageable?? Well, at least it did the trick this weekend. ;D
> 
> Thank you so much for all the comments/kudos! They are all so appreciated! <3 
> 
> Stay safe, darlings! :*


	6. it takes more than songs to hold a woman, son (shackle her, hang a chain about her throat, bind her with a band of gold)

_(For all her fears, it is Cersei’s breath, stinking, sour with wine, her drawling over the muffled roar of battle, that lances dread through her breast: “The gods have no mercy. That’s why they’re gods.”_

_But then Petyr says to her, soothes: “There is no justice in the world. Not unless we make it.”)_

_\--_

Sansa awoke early, her chambers not quite shed of nighttime shadows. She sat up at her desk, answering correspondence.

_(She must keep going, going, going.)_

Arya came to her as soon as she was done training, still streaked with sweat, hair limp and curling.

“I gave it to him,” she said.

“Thank you,” Sansa said, sat down at her makeshift vanity to wash her face.

Arya grew impatient, tapping her toes, “Do I want to know why Tyrion needed my dagger?”

“No,” she said, began to open her jewelry boxes, search for her rings, “It’s complicated.”

“The supply wagons are going to start arriving today. Jon said he would help. I want to get them organized before the crew arrives—”

“Good,” she said, prim, began to slide her bracelets up her arm.

“Sansa.”

_(That_ tone, _the one time that Arya could be confused for their mother.)_

She looked up, “What?”

Arya’s face was pinched, “Mother wanted me to speak with you.”

“We speak all the time, Arya,” Sansa replied evenly. She held up a pair of earrings in the mirror. 

“Sansa—”

Sansa turned to fully face her sister; brow arched. 

_(Sansa cannot fight with a sword or dagger or bow. She knows how to throw down a gauntlet all the same.)_

Arya shook her head, “Never mind.”

Just then, Catelyn bustled in, hair already coiled and pinned, fully dressed.

“You came straight here, honestly, Arya—go bathe! We are guests in this home!”

Arya rolled her eyes and left without another word.

Catelyn sighed with the weight borne by all mothers of difficult children and began to rapidly undo Sansa’s nighttime plait, said quietly, “I don’t want to—”

“What is it?”

“Talisa got her courses yesterday evening.”

Sansa sighed, pressed her thumbs to her temples, “Is she disappointed?”

_(“_ I _am,” Petyr offers from the bed.)_

“Wouldn’t you be?”

\--

_(They agree on the annulment, almost immediately. Their marriage hangs about her like a tangible weight, like shackles. He gives no resistance._

_Still, she knows it saddens Tyrion a little when she hands back her wedding ring, a bauble that had been tossed amongst her still-unpacked things from the Vale, lost among dresses with too-short hems, half-done embroidery wheels, and other girlhood things.)_

\--

Morning came too soon for Tyrion. It was his legs this morning, pinching with lightning sharpness that ran up his thighs and into his hips and arse.

_(He does not think of the oil.)_

He found Janos in the library, like the maidservants had told him he might go.

“Lord Janos!” he said brightly, “I am glad to see you.”

_(You will set the trap, Sansa whispers to him, together we will spring it.)_

“Ah, Lord Hand, how are you this morning?” Lord Janos reminded him vaguely of Lord Manderly, mustachioed and booming with an acute gaze that undercut his broad japes, made them sound more like threats. He was a sharp contrast to his brother, Bartholomew, thin, sallow, silent, who Tyrion was unsure had heard utter more than two sentences together.

“I am well,” Tyrion said, “I heard you were looking for some texts about the Great War.”

Janos nodded, “Yes, yes, I was. Many claim the dead walked again.”

Tyrion said seriously, “They did. I saw them myself.”

_(Of all the things he’s seen, all the things he’s done, the wights are by far the most horrifying. He does not think of them often, pocketed it away as a night terror, something not quite real._

_Still, sometimes, when he sleeps, especially when he is at Winterfell, he can feel them, their hands, hears their rattling._

_“Wake up, Tyrion,” Sansa shakes him awake in the library, “You were having a nightmare.”_

_“I apologize, Your Grace.”_

_“It’s alright,” her face is sweetness itself, presses her hand to his cheek, “I’m here now.”)_

Janos seemed skeptical, “And how does one defeat the dead?”

_(Well, I thought you would never ask, my good ser.)_

“Why, dragon glass, of course.”

Now that peaked Janos’ interest, “That is the stuff of legend.”

“Is it?” Tyrion paused for effect and withdrew from his belt—the dagger gleamed in the thin morning light, “I always carry it now. The magic in it protects the wearer.”

_(Unlike Sansa, he has fewer qualms about lies.)_

“Beautiful,” Janos said, “May I?”

“Oh, of course,” handed it over, “This is a newer piece. Lord Gendry Baratheon—”

“The old king’s son?”

“The very same. Forger of the Stormlands they call him. Dragon glass is his specialty.”

_(“Here,” Arya said that morning, without preamble, “He just made it, don’t lose it.”_

_“You have such little faith in me, Princess Arya.”_

_“Watch it, Lord Hand, Sansa doesn’t need your cock anymore.”)_

Janos held the blade up to the light, “Beautiful work.”

“Careful. Sharper than steel. It’s called ‘zīrtys perzys’ in Old Valyrian—”

“Frozen fire,” Janos finished. He handed back the dagger, repeated, “Beautiful work.”

“Thank you,” Tyrion said, smiled, “Oh, I didn’t realize the time. Have you eaten yet today, Janos?”

\--

_(She_ asks _him for the annulment, as if it he would ever object to it, as if he had a choice in the beginning or the end. It makes him storm with a hundred conflicting rages.)_

\--

She sat with Robb at the morning meal—

_(This had always been Petyr’s way—lessons that she did not realize were lessons until later, tests that she did not know if she passed or failed until later. It made her hungry, sniffing like a wolfhound for any sign of his approval._

_She had grown to recognize when the instruction began and finished, towards the end of it all. But Robb was still at the beginning—)_

“That one’s ours,” she said, so quietly that Robb had to bend to hear, “The maid serving Lord Tyrion and Janos.”

Robb glanced subtly to the young blonde serving girl, pouring ale into Janos’ cup.

Sansa continued, making careful work of slicing her blood sausage, “Her mother was from Lannisport before she married a Northman and came here to serve at Widow’s Watch—”

“She looks like a Lannister,” Robb tilted his head, “In the right light.” 

Sansa smiled a little, “Oh yes, there’s certainly something mixed up in there but, most importantly, she can do the Western accent. Her assignment is Lord Tyrion and Lord Tyrion only. She goes where he goes—”

“Does he not notice when the same serving girl shows up wherever he is?”

Smiled stretched, “Everyone has a blind spot. I rather count on Lord Tyrion’s being the smallfolk.”

_(_ Such _a Lannister, she thinks, with savor.)_

She took a delicate bite of her sausage, “Her name is Elsie. In case you were wondering.”

\--

_(It worries Tyrion a little that Sansa is so insistent upon not marrying. There is no clear successor in the North—no cousins, no nephews, no—_

_Bran worried him, too. But there he sees the opportunities: the ability to stabilize the Dornish, to raise the West, the web of marriage alliances between old great houses and new rising houses that could yield the perfect heir._

_But she will not do it. Refuses. Flirts with diplomats and visiting princes, refuses them all in the end._

_Beds him, tells him she loves him, six months later in conference with her brothers, brings him the annulment papers.)_

\--

Tyrion went to Bran after the morning meal. Knocked loudly before entering. Bran was up and, in his chair,—Davos’ doing, in Podrick’s absence—

_(When he returns from the North, bedridden, Bran accommodates him, comes to his chambers to meet, lets him rest, brings him papers._

_“How could I not?” he says, smiling wryly at his lap, “It’s not like you make me climb the stairs.”)_

“Your Grace, it is almost time for the meeting,” Tyrion said.

“The Iron Bank’s forces lost ground outside Norvos yesterday evening,” Bran said quietly, “A raven has been sent here but will likely not arrive for several days, if not weeks.”

“Well, that is good news, I will be sure to alert the Queen—”

Bran’s head snapped towards him, “You should have taken the oil.”

_(He is a boy still, in so many ways, this king of his. Tyrion tries to understand, tries to tamp down his frustrations, he had a sister he loved once too.)_

“That, Your Grace, is none of your concern.”

Bran cocked his head, “Still, Lord Hand. It was unkind.”

“And how much have you actually told your mother and brother these past two days?” Tyrion said.

_(There are days when all of Bran’s knowledge makes him think that he_ knows _anything.)_

Bran pursed his lips—

_(Makes him look like Sansa.)_

“That, Lord Hand, is none of your concern.”

\--

_(Tyrion signs the papers when she gives them to him, a couple among a dozen that they stamp and seal that day._

_Then he takes her back to bed.)_

\--

Talisa was not at the morning meal and so, with the few moments she had before beginning talks with the Bank, she went to her chambers.

Talisa was laid on the bed though she started and rose to her feet when Sansa entered.

“I am sorry to disturb you,” Sansa said, retreating slightly.

“Did Lady Catelyn tell you?”

_(Her eyes are bruised, swollen with a lack of sleep._

_The way she moves, stiff, forceless—Sansa knows that bone-deep weariness._

_I am sorry, she wants to say. Doesn’t.)_

Sansa nodded, “Yes.”

Talisa clutched her hands in her lap, twisted them nervously, “It will happen, Sansa. These things take time.”

“I know,” Sansa said, “It’s alright—”

_(“Do we lie now?” Petyr asked, head cocked in genuine curiosity, chin on her shoulder.)_

“—I just came to see if you needed anything.”

Talisa shook her head, “No, I will be fine. I made myself a draught last night. I’ll feel well again tomorrow.”

Sansa nodded, looked to the side— 

_(She misses Margaery so much, Shae so much, that sometimes it seems that she can actually feel the fibers of her heart pulling apart.)_

\--“I have to go see the Bank.”

Before she shut the door, Talisa called, “If you see Robb, can you tell him?”

Sansa sharpened at the implication, considered refusing, then, “Of course.”

\--

_(“You could marry Tyrion,” Arya had offered when Robb returned._

_She raged at her then._

_Tyrion tells her too: “We had a chance after the war. I_ gave _you a chance.”_

_She raged at him too._

_But, when he leaves her, goes home, when she finds out what he chooses when he does, she thinks on it, the eternal sweetness of_ having _him—)_

\--

Before the meeting, Robb found her in her chambers to walk her down to the chamber. She rose collecting her papers, “I have been thinking. I am concerned about the Bank seeing us as too homogenous—not recognizing our sovereignty.”

Robb nodded, “I had the same thought.”

“If you could—”

“Of course, Sansa.”

_(“Glad to see we are all in agreement,” Petyr says.)_

She stopped him just as they went to leave, “Talisa got her courses last evening.”

He sighed heavily, ran a hand over his face, “Gods.”

“These things take time,” she said gently.

_(There’s a panic that rips through her. What if—Robb beats her to it—)_

“We need to start thinking of what we will do if it does not,” Robb said.

_(There is no questioning him about giving up Talisa. He will not do it.)_

_(Panic stutters in her chest. She feels suddenly sick; biliously angry.)_

Clipped: “We will speak of it later.” 

\--

_(It would never be enough, she decides._

_She is hungry now. But being Lady of the Rock? Watching her kingdom from afar? She would just starve to death.)_

\--

The meeting went as planned.

Robb thumped his fist on the table, “The North and the South are two separate countries, Lord Janos, you would do well to remember that. The North has never taken responsibility for wars perpetrated by a Southern king.”

“I understand that but given our deals with Petyr Baelish, there were certain debts made in the North’s name—”

“Paid out in Southern gold,” Tyrion interjected, looked to Janos pointedly.

“You want to double charge us for a debt already paid?” Robb said, catching on, “The Iron Bank’s debts, including that which you allege were made with a man, long dead, were paid with the liquidation of the Tyrells—”

_(“See?” Petyr says, “He’s doing fine.”)_

She stayed silent, watched Robb bite and growl and scratch at the Iron Bank on her behalf. She met Tyrion’s eye across the table—

_(Delaying, she thinks, has always been a strength for both of them.)_

\--but then, Caspar, full of nerves and poor japes, said something about a combined bank and Robb began in on him again. She broke from Tyrion to offer a sympathetic smile to him: _I am sorry,_ she tried to say, _He is my brother. What can I do?_

_(“I almost pity him,” Lady Flint says, watching Caspar leave the meeting, “He’s like a lamb.”_

_“Me as well. But then I think about their interest rates,” Sansa responded, apple cracked as she bit into it, “It helps.”_

_Still, there’s a little tributary of guilt running through her core. Not sure of its source.)_

\--

_(It was only two years ago that she stopped trying to convince him to marry someone else and have children.)_

_(As if marriage was only her secret wound.)_

\--

They are walking in the godswood again, another chance encounter.

“We keep meeting like this,” Caspar said, like he knew that there was little accident to it.

“I just—I just—It is so hard to be in those meetings,” she sighed, “That chamber gets warm.”

“I see what you mean,” Caspar said, “All those dull numbers, too.”

_(She thinks it likely that he is playing at being so thick-headed. She’s also not sure it matters._

_“It doesn’t,” Petyr says, shrugging, “It will end the same for him.”)_

“I saw your brother training this morning,” Caspar said.

“Which one?”

“Both, actually,” he said, “They were very good.”

“They enjoy sparring together,” she said.

“Your brother, Robb, he is very, well, _firm_ in his beliefs about the North.”

“He can be a bit uncompromising,” Sansa said, stooping to examine some lavender, “But his sons will be kings after me. He is trying to protect our father’s legacy.”

_(Four years ago, at that conference, their declaration of annulment, unsigned on the bedside table:_

_Each of her kisses down his neck feel like irritating beestings, “Tyrion, the West needs an heir.”_

_“Thank the Gods for Galladon,” he groans, captures her face in his hands and kisses her mouth to quiet her.)_

“You will not marry?” Caspar asked delicately, “Have children?”

_(He pushes her, too, as he pushes her onto the bed, pushes up her skirts. Fingers play against her, circling but not entering, breathless, “And you, Your Grace, will you marry?”_

_She is trembling, sprawling, arms reached above her head, fingers furling and unfurling, “No.”)_

She stood and turned, “Well, I was married—”

“To the Lord Hand.”

_(He grazes the length of her thigh with his teeth, “You need to marry.”_

_She does not answer him, merely links her ankle behind his shoulders, closes her eyes. Makes him wonder if the kisses he is peppering along the crook of her knees feel like beestings too.)_

She waved her hand, “Oh, not truly,” she laughed lightly, “We barely think on it now. But it took ages to sort it out, to get it annulled, and no man wanted a married woman. Even if the marriage was not real.”

_(He strokes into her, shallow dips, “What about your heirs?”_

_“We have an—oh, oh—electoral system,” she says, dropping her head back, “Oh Gods.”_

_“And the political benefits a marriage alliance?”_

_“Right there, sweetheart, oh—” she closed her eyes, “You lack imagination, my lord.”_

_“Do I?” Presses in at an angle and she is pulling him up for open-mouthed kisses.)_

“And now?”

“My father promised me someone brave and gentle and strong—”

_(They lie, next to each other, her collapsed on top of him, pushing forgotten._

_“So that’s why we went to war,” she breathes._

_He pants a laugh._

_She balances her chin on her hands, stacked on his chest._

_“Hello,” he says fondly._

_She reaches out and brushes a damp errant curl from his forehead, “Hello, darling.”_

_Her eyes are shining._

_He thinks:_ I think she loves me. I think we might be in love. _)_

She sighed, “But Robb insists that if I marry, I must marry someone who can benefit the North.”

She touched Caspar’s arm, “If I am being honest, I came out here because Robb was trying to persuade me into candidates. And I just—” She left the end dangling, sighed again, and continued down the path—

_(“Well done, sweetling,” Petyr says, “Now, all that’s left is your finish.”)_

She turned, smiling, “Are you coming, Caspar?”

_(Petyr smirked beside her, “Caught.”)_

“Yes,” Caspar said, grinning, “Yes, I am.”

\--

_(“I cannot marry,” she tells him finally, she’s slipped to his side, nestled into his shoulder, “The idea of it, the idea of a man being able to—if he wanted—”_

_“You are Queen,” he says firmly._

_“Your sister was a queen,” she murmurs, “Didn’t stop a thing.”)_

\--

They met with the Bank again, just before supper—

“What about trade?” Janos said abruptly.

“We would trade directly with the Braavosi government, wouldn’t we?” Sansa asked innocently.

“Of course, Your Grace,” Caspar interjected, hand extended across the table towards her, “But we have found it useful, in times past, to be facilitators—metal goods, oil—”

“All sorts of things,” Janos continued, cutting him off, “We are essential partners to the government in Lys, you see—”

She met Tyrion’s eyes again across the table, found them expectant. She listened to Caspar and Janos, overlapping, before she cut them off, “The North is not interested in trading with the continent as a partner to the South.”

She did not miss how Janos glanced at Tyrion. When Janos looked away, she took an intentional sip of her ale, _Well done, Lord Hand._

Tyrion clicked his pipe against his teeth like a matching toast. 

\--

_(_ _Thank the Gods we didn’t stay married, he thinks, when he sees her, crowned, at Winterfell that first time._

_Thank the Gods we didn’t stay married, he thinks again, sex slick, her hands on his chest, balancing her chin, whispering: “Hello, darling.”_

_Thank the Gods we didn’t stay married, he thinks a third time, when he sees her in that white gown at the election.)_

\--

He finished the book that he had taken from the library that first night. He went, full of intention of selecting a new one and returning to his chambers to read.

But his bones ached and the walk back, just now, felt a little too much.

So he sat in the armchair. And he waited.

\--

_(He tells her that he loves her only after their marriage ends.)_

\--

The Iron Bank retired early again tonight. Arya left for bed, Robb and Jon went to train in the dusking yard, Catelyn went to go visit with Brienne, Talisa she was not sure where she had gone. 

She went to her chamber to sew. She had agreed to make Jeyne’s wedding cloak. Jeyne had chosen a silk that they had dyed the blue of her house—

_(“I want it to float,” Jeyne had sighed, “I want it to look like I am a water nymph.”_

_“A water nymph?” Sansa had laughed._

_“Yes,” Jeyne giggled, “Like the song about the girl made of sea foam.”)_

Robb came to her as she was picking through her needles, looking for the right size.

“This morning,” he said, slouching against the doorframe, “Blind spots.”

“Yes?” She did not look up, threaded the needle with precision.

“What’s yours?”

_(Oh._

_Her first thought is of Sandor Clegane’s white cloak, still in the bottom of a trunk, pushed to the corner of her chamber in Winterfell. Then, following like a link in a chain: “We could have been happy,” she tells Tyrion, “In the end.”)_

“What do _you_ think it is?” she asked carefully.

Robb sighed, “That you will not marry. That you push off the reality that without an heir the North could fall to chaos and the death of our House.”

She hummed noncommittedly.

Then Robb asked, “What about mine?”

_(Yourself, she is about to say, but Petyr stops her: “He’ll never learn.”)_

“You need to figure it out,” she said, began to count her pins, “Before those who wish you ill do.”

“And you already have?” Robb asked, tired.

“I do not wish you ill, brother, I never have.”

_(“Well, not_ seriously,” _Petyr says, catches her eyes, raises hands in defeat, “Apologies, sweetling. Indulge in blindness, if you wish.”)_

Robb pushed: “But you have thought of it.”

She sighed: “I cannot lie, not even to myself.” 

Robb nodded, considered his hands, “Good night, Sansa.”

She called behind him, “Go to Talisa tonight.”

Robb turned, nostrils flared, jaw tight, “I will handle my own marriage, Your Grace.”

Then he left.

She pleated, snipped, sewed until her fingers ached. The mark on her palm was still tender. She grew tired of the work after a while, could not settle to it.

So, she went to the library.

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay safe out there! <3 <3 <3
> 
> Thank you for all the kind kudos and comments--they are all so, so, so, so appreciated! <3 
> 
> Chapter title spliced together from "Chant (Reprise)"


	7. how long's it been? (a little moonshine ain't no sin)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note: some internalized kinkshaming/sex shaming. it's brief but still...read with care <3

_(Two years ago: The night that they have those first lemon cakes, they both eat so many, that both of them do not feel well the next day, roiling sharpness in their bellies, skip the morning meal, cannot stomach food until the late afternoon._

_In the library, later, he asks her how she feels, and she giggles, and she sounds girlish—her age, really, she just sounds her age—and he wants to bottle the sound, “I want more cakes.”_

_He rolls her eyes at her, jests, “You are a_ hedonist _, Sansa Stark, who knew?”)_

_(But later, alone in the dark, she panics. Wonders if he thinks that, if others think that, truly.)_

\--

The library at Widow’s Watch was much smaller than the one at Winterfell. Lord Flint was an avid collector of books and texts and as his library had grown, he had improvised: creating shelves atop shelves so they towered above the visitor arranged in a virtually unnavigable maze.

Tyrion quite liked it.

He was unsurprised when Sansa came in.

_(If they were serious about this whole thing, he thinks, they would not be here at all._

_But love is a habit as much as it is anything else. So here they are.)_

She stood, straight-backed, before him, too close, too far, “I meant to ask you how your talk with Janos went,”

“Oh, I am sure you already know,” he responded.

Her eyes narrowed, “I don’t know to what you are referring, Lord Hand.”

He considered her in the inconstant firelight, the chiaroscuro curves and angles of her, “It went well, Your Grace, he liked the dagger, he did not like you backing out of a trade deal,” he cocked his head, “Nice touch, by the way.”

“We need more time,” she said, worried her bottom lip. 

“They are as pressed as us. More so. Bran says that they are losing in Norvos. Once they learn of it, they will be eager.”

Sansa nodded, “Good.”

Silence. Then, “How is it going with Caspar?”

_(Sansa wears jealousy like an ermine, it only makes her precious. It sits on him like ill-fitting motley.)_

She bit her lip and looked away, “Well. He’s a good man, I think.”

Warning, “He’s a member of the Iron Bank.”

“I expect he will propose by the end of the week. If all goes to plan.” 

“He’s—”

“He’s not like you.”

“Well, good for—”

“Don’t make this a jape,” she said quietly, “Don’t humiliate yourself. For my sake if not for your own.”

More silence.

She said, “You looked at me all day.”

_(It feels like they’re now in the middle of a conversation—a silent one that has been stretched out for years.)_

He closed his eyes: “Sansa, you were right _there_.”

_(You promised not to lie, he thinks._

_She knows. She always does.)_

“No, I wasn’t,” she looked at the ground, at the ceiling, at the precarious shelves, anywhere but his face, because he was _looking_ at her again, pricked at her, bothered her, said abruptly, “I don’t like the way you look at me.”

“What?”

“Like I’m something from a song.”

He was pinching the bridge of his nose again, in the way that she understood to mean that she was being _difficult,_ “Most women would be flattered.”

She stared back, defiant.

Dropped his hand to grip the arm of his chair, said, clipped, “Well, it’s awfully hard when half the time you’re dressed like a literal goddess.”

She turned, “You look at me like—”

_(You look at me like the Hound did, like Petyr does.)_

“Sansa—”

_(Knows she’s not being quite fair. Less expectant, less proprietary. But still it’s—)_

“Like I am not human.”

He stared at her, eyes hard, “I love you. More than I have ever loved any woman.”

“You loved Daenerys more than you loved any woman. And it almost got us all killed.”

He fell silent, then, cruel, “Shall I blindfold myself?”

She sighed, frustrated, “I just don’t want—it is unfair—it’s like you can’t touch me.”

“I _can’t_ touch you.”

“Tyrion—”

He did seem to regret it, shame-faced, “I am sorry, Your Grace, that was unnecessary.”

“I don’t want to be like her. I don’t want to think that my tricks—that they’re _real_. I don’t want you to treat me like you treated her.”

_(I think I might be mad, is what she means. I think I might be cruel, is what she means.)_

_(He’s not even sure what they’re talking about anymore but all that he knows can be reduced to this: No matter what Sansa thinks him to be, he is not her—he is not a Stark, thank the Gods—and has spent much more of his life drinking darker, stronger stuff than the milk of human kindness._

_But he also knows that a Lannister pays their debts._

_For six months, he has been trying to repay her for six_ years _of tenderness.)_

“We’re not them,” he said finally, with quiet sureness, “Any of them.” 

She pulled at her braid, anxious, “I just did not—” deep breath, “I did not think it was going to be as _difficult_ as all this.”

He sat forward, eyes on her face, seeing, not looking, took her hand, did not kiss it, “We’re alright, we’re going to be alright.”

“Tyrion—”

“This isn’t dragons or wights or even my sister, this isn’t any of those. We’ll get through it.”

_(Here’s what she realizes with a jet of shame: Tyrion has healed. Clumsily, perhaps, the stitches are not neat, there’s pieces of him mangled or missing, and he aches. But there is reformed skin where himself and others have torn into him, pink and white and silver scar tissue where she has none, where she is still bleeding._

_Her body is webbed with scars from Joffrey’s lash and Ramsay’s knives, but she had thought that the deeper one—the lacerations on her mind, her heart, all those secret places, had scabbed over, too. Perhaps she has been fooling herself, perhaps the election and Robb and her mother and all that has happened in the past six months unpicked whatever bindings she did have—though how loosely they must have been wrapped, she thinks in her spleen, that a happy thing was all it took to shake them off—but it still stands that she is bleeding out and Tyrion is not._

_She has only ever, ever, ever wanted him to be satisfied, to have enough. And now he does, she feels a familiar dread, the terrible sinking sensation of being left behind.)_

“Let’s talk of something else,” he said, tugging on her hand, “Come now, let’s talk of something else.”

\--

_(They do. They talk of everything but the thing between them. They talk of trade deals and Lysene poetry and court gossip and Bronn’s latest mistress and Jon and Jarl and Arya and Gendry and Jeyne’s wedding and—_

_This is it._

_This is her blind spot. She is starving for home._

_And she has built a home of sorts in the chest and throat and belly of this man.)_

\--

_(They leave to go to bed, friends once more. Petyr is not there.)_

_\--_

_(On the third day, she wakes up hungry.)_

\--

They met in the early dawn in the solar.

_(His voice is sleep-raw still—oh, this is—she should not—)_

She said quietly, “We need to divide them. I think that’s the next step.”

_(He leaned his head back while he listened, and she has a sudden, strange urge to bite his neck.)_

He thought, pressed his lips together—

_(Once, three years ago, in a bolder, braver moment, she had tipped up his chin and dragged her thumb along the swell of his lower lip—)_

“The location of the branch. We’ll get on the topic of the location of the branch. Twist them in knots. Waste their time. Besides it will drive Davos to madness.”

_(The second year, the year of lust, unbridled, uncontained, he takes her in a storeroom, against a pile of grain sacks:_ This is a madness, _she thinks, she shivers as he licks a path down her shoulder,_ Tyrion, honey, this is a madness. _)_

He left shortly after, turning back in the door, “I almost forgot—Can I speak with you tonight about the whale oil trade?”

_(There is something that he does that she finds inexplicably alluring. It’s when his eyes glance to the ceiling, then pull down to her, like he’s taking the light with him—Oh, there it is.)_

She nodded silently, “Of course. At your convenience, my lord.”

\--

She told Robb right before the meeting, worrying over their latest pages of notes, “I think it is the location. They are too Southern-centric, if we want to control the flow of cash to the South, we’ll need it in the North.”

Robb nodded, “That makes sense. We can mention this afternoon.”

“Good, good. Thank you, Robb.” 

\--

They decided to take the midday meal in the negotiation chamber much to Sansa’s chagrin. She chose a seat across from Caspar, made sure to send him an encouraging smile, as Janos, per usual, introduced their revised proposals.

_(It was the gown that did him in, he decides later.)_

“We understand your concerns about the branch’s placement,” Janos said, “King’s Landing has always been—”

“I am unsure as to why you have insisted on us being here, if you insist upon being in the South,” Robb said.

“My brother is right,” she said, “This will be a Southern institution.”

“Queen Sansa,” Davos said, “I would allow Janos to finish, with the amount of Northern traffic in and out of King’s Landing—”

_(It’s blue. And he just loves her in blue.)_

Davos started: “Fairmarket. A hub of Southern and Northern trade and—”

“Inaccessible by ship,” Robb said, “And in the heart of the Riverlands—the South.”

“I feel like we are getting off topic,” Janos said gently.

She began to frown, looked to Caspar. He leaned forward, “Perhaps a few minutes more.”

Janos looked at the grateful smile on her face, the way she leaned towards Caspar, grumbled, “Fine.”

_(The way it comes in at the waist, the belt, it just—Gods, the way her hips look—)_

“Perhaps, we could split the difference,” Tyrion said, “Gulltown?”

Sansa narrowed her eyes, incredulous, “Gulltown?” 

“It is equidistant between Winterfell and King’s Landing,” Tyrion insisted. 

Robb looked to her, _Is that true?_

She had no idea. Said instead, “I wouldn’t open a smithy in Gulltown, let alone a bank.”

_(It’s neckline is lower than she typically wears—but she really does have fantastic breasts—)_

“Regardless,” she said, “A Southern holding.”

Tyrion spread his palms as if in dismay, “Well, I would propose the border, Your Grace, but with the new construction—”

“Construction that you have agreed to co-sponsor, my lord,” Robb interjected.

“To be sure, but it complicates things—”

Sansa sighed, “You have not even considered Barrowtown.”

“Barrowtown?” Tyrion exclaimed, “Barrowtown? Barrowtown—”

“—is the third largest town in the North—”

“—is probably half the size of Fairmarket—”

Caspar interrupted, smiling, “Well, Your Grace, we do appreciate a _fair market_ for goods—”

Oh _Gods._

She laughed anyway.

Robb cleared his throat, choking back his derisiveness, squeezed her knee under the table like they had when they were children. Bronn cocked his head, nudged Davos.

She looked, out of habit, to Tyrion, expected her mockery to be reflected back to her in his eyes. But he was staring intently at the table.

_(He is not, not, not looking at her breasts but then she titters at whatever inane thing Caspar says and the way it makes—well, he just about gets hard in his seat.)_

Tyrion shifted a bit and then said, “You will not consider splitting the branches?”

Sansa wanted to roll her eyes, _Don’t test them, Tyrion, you know why._

“Well, we have found the centralized model to be best—” Janos said.

_(Gods, he notices—the laces are at the front, at the bust, and if he pulled, just one, just two, tugged down her smallclothes—)_

“But we are not centralized,” Robb said, frowning, “We are two separate countries.”

She looked to him, “My brother is right. I just don’t know.”

Caspar scrambled, “Your Grace, we could consider two branches, really—”

_(He’s staring—her hair, she’s left it down today, no elaborate braids—and he could twist it about his fist—)_

She caught Tyrion’s eye, but he seemed bored. Did not blame him.

They continued like that for some time when finally, the grains of sand in Bronn’s hourglass had run down.

“Time for a break?”

\--

“Well done,” she said to him lowly.

“Thank you, Your Grace.” 

They were both dawdling, slow in picking up their things. Casting a glance over his shoulder, Davos led the others out.

“Is Gulltown truly equidistant?”

“I have no idea,” Tyrion said.

She laughed. His head snapped towards her.

He was looking at her, so seriously, like he was about to—

_(Heat, she thinks again, heat and warmth and bed linens and hot tea and bonfires and flushes.)_

\--“I like your hair like that,” he said finally.

“Oh,” she touched her hair, a little dazedly, “Thank you.”

_(When she leaves, he tries very, very hard not to look at her back, at her arse._

_By the Seven, she’s his King’s sister. She’s a Queen herself._

_Oh, and she walks like one, too.)_

_\--_

_(She changed for the evening meal, a looser gown with generous skirts, green and gold, and he’s so, so disappointed.)_

\--

The day passed as expected—they met again with the Iron Bank.

She flirted again with Caspar, wove him another tale of loneliness, listened to his japes, asked for his opinion on horseback riding.

She met with Robb. No talk of Talisa.

She ignored Arya.

She visited with Brienne and Galladon.

She let Jon take her for a walk about the godswood.

At dinner, she saw Tyrion. He looked to her. For all that she said and meant the night before, she found that, just for tonight, she really did not mind.

\--

_(The night before he leaves her, alone with a brother who hates her and a mother she cannot look at, he comes to her a final time._

_She looks to him, tired. He stood beside her and she pressed her face into his neck, hid there. Arms cage his waist, while his go to her nape, her back. He can feel her scars through the thin silk of her gown._

_The crook of his neck feels wet._

Fuck, Sansa, don’t do this. _He wants to beg her. Does not care if she would think him pathetic or pitiful._ Please please please please. I love you. Please.

_“Does this mean that this is still over?” he had asked her the week before._

_She had said, “I love you.”_

_Not yes, not no, just a confirmation of a different kind._

_He’s come to ask again. But he knows. He always knows._

_She says, her voice vibrating in the tender crook of his shoulder, “Eight houses.”_

_“Sorry?”_

_“Eight houses voted against me.”_

_“Out of nearly eighty,” he is already losing this battle and by the Gods, does he hate to lose._

_“Seventy-three,” She pulls back, shows him a paper scratched with numbers, “Nearly seven hundred and fifty vassals between them. They manage to convince Manderly or pull in a foreign investor or the Gods forbid, Robb—”_

_“Sansa.”_

_“It’s me. It’s me and the South. And that I will not marry.”_

_“They are fools,” he says, and it is desperate and poorly planned and—How in all the seven hells did he end up here_ again _?_

_“Fools with a point,” She covers her face in her hands, “Please, Tyrion, I—”_

_“I know,” he’s tugging away from her now, going, going, going, going—_

_She takes both his hands in hers, places twin kisses on them, leans to press her brow to them, “Please be kind.”)_

\--

She found herself in the library that evening, lost in a wilderness of numbers.

_(Petyr is beside her, “You’ve never had a head for figures, sweetling, here let me do it.”_

_“You got us into this mess in the first place,” she says._

_“Did I?” he said, practiced carelessness, “You wound me—“)_

“I brought tea.”

It was Tyrion. She looked up, slightly distracted, “Oh, thank you. Have you looked at the clauses—the third one?”

“On interest in loans to the Crown?”

She nodded, “I recalculated it, the way it’s worded, is so—”

“Unnecessarily complex.”

She smiled slightly, “I think, for the Bank, it’s likely completely necessary. Lady Flint said she had a book on financial code under the Targaryens—”

“By Maester Brenton?”

She hummed. He sat across from her and poured out the tea, “I’ve been thinking about the whale oil trade.”

She set her papers down, “Me too.”

“Does Arya plan to go to Lorvas on this next journey?”

“Briefly.”

He poured her a cup of tea and handed it to her, before doing the same for himself, “If the army in Norvos wins on the Bank of Lys’ coin, then the Iron Bank will be rendered redundant in the north of the continent. Whoever holds Norvos, by default, holds Lorvas.”

She sipped at her tea, “Arya thinks that we may still be able to cross the northern passage even in winter.”

Tyrion raised an eyebrow, “How?”

She smirked, “Iron hulls to cut the ice. She saw them in the west.”

He grinned, “Oh. She _is_ brilliant.”

“Lorvas to Norvos is only a two-week journey. Winters there are not nothing. They will have need of the whale oil.”

“White Harbor from King’s Landing is a three-week journey,” it sounded almost like an invitation.

She narrowed her eyes, “ _You_ can cross the Narrow Sea in winter. You don’t need access to my trade routes.”

Tyrion shrugged, “Our trade in Essos has been limited by the chaos there. The south of Essos is not as appealing as it once was.”

She frowned.

“Besides, you must admit that betting on the winter passage is a risk anyway. You may have need of us Southerners yet.”

“Winter is coming,” she said wryly, “It is true for our other trade as well.”

“A few years without Lysene silks, Your Grace, would be a true tragedy.”

“And here I was about to compliment you on the gilt in your doublet,” He smirked at her over the rim of his cup and she raised an eyebrow, “Besides, I was thinking more along the lines of your precious lumber.”

“And here I was about to compliment you on your generosity.”

She raised her cup in acknowledgement, then considered the ceiling, “I do not mind telling you that it is a fundamental problem for us: the winters. We cannot develop a reliance on foreign goods and then isolate ourselves for years at a time. Manderly, of course, still refuses to listen, refuses to _try_.” She waved a hand with a dismissal that she generally saved for southerners, leaned forward to put her cup down, “He is from the coast where the winters are milder.”

Tyrion stared at her, “Does the sea itself not freeze over?”

“To be sure, but they can still fish through it and it snows only a little.”

“Your Grace, you may want to define a little.”

“Only fifteen or so feet in any given year,” she said, without irony.

He began to laugh, and she looked at him strangely, “What?”

“You, Sansa, just you.”

She covered her mouth, tried to conceal her smile.

_(He is_ flirting, _she thinks. For all that she’s stolen the past two afternoons with Caspar, she had almost forgotten how it was done.)_

Then he truly began to laugh. He said, heaving, “I just thought—Do you remember Podrick dragging Brienne across the ice?”

Sansa’s eyes widened, surprised, “Oh Gods, _yes._ ”

_(It had been the same time as Bran’s coronation, nearly seven years ago. She had come as a sign of goodwill._

_It is an unpleasant time, winter bearing down, frost seizing the last of the autumn crops, the devastation of dragonfire had destroyed any surplus that could be used for timber or to build extra shelter, Yara Greyjoy is raiding up the coasts, and Dorne is in shambles, the Reach even worse off, there are rumors that Daenerys will return and burn her enemies, and Tyrion—_

_Tyrion is drunk._

_Sansa is beside him in the gardens of the Red Keep, some strange mirror of the days of their marriage, and the thought makes him want to drink more._

_They are discussing—arguing, she would say—about something, something surely inappropriate for the Hand to the King to be saying to a foreign queen. But he is so angry. All the time._

_He is about to start at her again, is drawing breath to when—_

_Podrick comes, in full armor and gold cloak, dragging a wagon behind him, where the Captain of the Kingsguard, Brienne of Tarth, heavy with child, sits, grumbling. He is slipping on the ice crusting the path, legs akimbo, wagon teetering. It is such a sight, so random and unexpected, that it breaks whatever fury had been building between them._

_They laugh and laugh—it is the first time he has ever seen her laugh—until their sides ache._

_“This is so undignified,” she says, trying to calm herself, presses her hands to her cheeks, and that only makes him laugh harder._

_Even days later, at the thought of it, both of them spill over with giggles, tears leaking from their eyes.)_

Tyrion wheezed, “Can you—can you imagine—”

She finished, “The Iron Bankers?”

He nodded, too overcome to speak. They quieted, panting, only for their eyes to meet and it began again.

“Can I tell you a secret?” she whispered, hiccupping slightly.

“Hmmm,” Tyrion hummed, still stuttering with laughter.

She leaned closer to him, breathed slowly, each word falling heavy like rubies into his palm, “I have been sending metal goods to the Bank of Lys for five moonturns.” She pressed her fingers over her mouth like she had said something terribly rude.

His eyes widened; he grasped the wrist of her other hand. She looked momentarily worried like he was about to scold her, but he said, eyes round, earnestness itself, “Me too.”

Surprise, slow smile. They fell back into fresh laughter.

She said, “I heard about the brother from the ambassador—”

“Varys told me,” Tyrion nodded.

“I thought it was—” she choked.

“A fucking miracle,” he grinned, “I wrote to him the next day.”

Sansa chuckled into her teacup, “I didn’t even wait that long.”

He laughed again at that, wiping at the corner of his eye. She set down her teacup.

As their breath steadied, quieted, their gaze fell, together, always together, to his hand, still curled around her wrist.

He said: “Sansa—”

_(She’s been hungry all_ day _.)_

Just as she said, “Gods, Tyrion—”

_(His bones, his marrow splinters in recognition: They’re going to have sex tonight.)_

His grip tightened.

_(“Go on, sweetling, take a bite,” Petyr whispers, crouched over the chair, “See where it gets you.”)_

She watched him, waiting. His jaw twitched like he was cracking seeds between his teeth.

Finally: “What do you want, Sansa?”

The fire split.

She said: “I _need_ my book.”

He nodded, released her, finger by finger.

\--

_(Bran asks him three months after he returns, “I think we need a permanent diplomatic position in the North.”_

_“It is a good idea if the Queen is amenable to it.”_

_“Would you be interested?”_

_“I am Lord Hand.”_

_“I am aware, but you have been loyal. You deserve some reward beyond more paperwork.”_

_“Isn’t a diplomatic position exactly that?”_

_Bran stared at him, “You’re avoiding the question.”_

_His gaze is so like Sansa, so like her, that he feels slightly ill, like he’s had one too many cakes._

_He thinks of her, pretty in his bed, all pink skin and fanned hair and bright eyes in love. Thinks of their wedding rings, nestled in a drawer in his dress, his that he didn’t take off until he met Daenerys and hers that she gave him back when the septon pronounced their annulment. He thinks of her leaning over him in the bath, spreading her hands across his back and his hips, “Where does it hurt?” He thinks, strangely, randomly, of a cyvasse game they played three years ago, where neither won, just kept capturing pieces and discarding them until there were none on the board. He thinks of her kisses, his head against her breast, and her words: “I love you; I am in love with you, I love you.”_

_Then he thinks of all the sleepless nights, bruised eyes, waiting for her, her waiting for him, hushed voices and furtive fondling. Thinks of Shae. He thinks of Galladon and the beauty of the Rock and the ache in his bones and the clean sea air. Thinks of her in the godswood, “I am terrified for children we don’t even have.” Then he thinks, again, of her, choking on her own victory: “Will he forgive me?” and then the night before he leaves, the list of names, dissenters, threats. And then: “It’s me and the South.” Thinks of that night when they first made love, so sad, and her saying, a few days later, “I like it. Being queen.”_

_Finally: Hands cradling his face, fingers stroking the mangled remnants of his nose: “You’re a kind man, Tyrion. You’re always so kind to me.”_

_Looks to her brother and shakes his head, “No, Your Grace.”)_

\--

She disappeared into the maze of bookshelves. He waited. Then followed. Her to the left, he to the right.

He listened for the slide of her skirt against the flagstones, traced the tapping of her slippers, tried to follow it like a thread through a labyrinth. Following, always following.

Suddenly, she stopped.

“Tyrion.”

One shelf away.

“Sansa.”

Breath.

“What do you want?”

He pressed his forehead into the sharp edge of one of the shelves, said, “Surely you must know, Your Grace, I am rather notorious for my desires.”

“Desires are different from wants.”

_(There’s a bitter part of him that wants to correct her, “Well, actually, Sansa, if you looked it up—”_

_But he stops because he knows_ exactly _what she means.)_

“I don’t want for much anymore.”

_(It’s a truth and a lie, all at once._

_He’s always been famished. But war and Jaime and Cersei and Galladon and stabbing a wight in the ribs have dulled the pangs in his belly._

_Where the war had sharpened Sansa to a knifepoint, it had eroded him, left him tired, flattened, flea-bitten._

_Still, he’s hungrier than most.)_

He listened to her slip to the floor and he joined her, fancied the keen edges of the shelf that pressed into his back was the ridge of Sansa’s spine, “I want the Iron Bank to be gone.”

She sighed, “Me _too._ ”

Took a breath, said, “What do you want?”

Said, low and tired, “I am so sick to death of wanting.” Then, to him, curious, “You always ask me that.”

“I always _want_ to know. It’s interesting. You’re interesting.”

She huffed slightly in that way he has always guessed meant she was halfway flattered, halfway annoyed.

_(He cannot help but smirk_ _at that. Adorable. Wants to hear it again.)_

He continued, “Sometimes you have _very_ interesting wants.”

_(She huffs again. He grins.)_

“You’re avoiding the question.”

Twisted the corner of his jacket, “Am I?” She does not answer and so he closed his eyes and continued, “I wanted _you._ Very much, dear.”

“Not anymore?” Fragile, light, like she was balancing.

“Not the same,” he amended.

_(It is easier like this, when he can not see the gray of her eyes, to tell her. It is easier to pretend that she is not listening. Like when he sends letters. He can think that the raven was blown off course by a wind or got caught in a storm or slammed into a tree and died.)_

“And how did you want me before?”

_(He thinks: Fleabites raise rashes that itch. He’ll worry about the scabs tomorrow.)_

“I’d rather talk about how I want you now.”

Sharp intake of breath, “Oh. I don’t—I mean—” Exhale, slow and steady, “Go on.”

He leaned his head back, “I mean, some wants don’t really change, do they?”

Paused, listened to the stillness.

Then continued, casually, “I’m talking philosophically here, of course. But practically, I think I’ll always _want_ to touch your teats and I’ll always _want_ to have you sitting on my face. And I’ll definitely always, always, always _want_ to watch you peak.”

_(She thinks: They call him the Queenbreaker. It’s suddenly, perversely, hazily, foggily an appealing image—)_

Her silence burst the dam building up inside of him, “Sansa, if you could hear what I was thinking in that meeting today. You in that gown. Fuck, Sansa, the things I wanted to do with you—”

_(She’s_ starving. _)_

Strained to hear, the scrabble of her shoes on the floor, the sigh of her skirts—

“Gods, Sansa,” he breathed, “Are you touching yourself?”

Hesitation, “Yes,” waited, then, “Just keep talking, sweetheart.”

He bit his lip, stayed silent.

“Please, Tyrion.”

_(Scabs will heal, he thinks wildly, and fleabites are only small—)_

“You looked so pretty today, Sansa, so pretty, like the Maiden come to life.”

Hooked breath, fluttering sigh.

Reminded him of watching her eat her first lemon cake after years of winter.

_(Two years ago: “The first bite,” she said, licking icing sugar from her fingers, so unladylike, “is always the sweetest.”)_

“I wanted to crawl up on that dais and push your skirts up right there—”

_(Like a supplicant, he thinks, like a pilgrim, a flagellant.)_

“—lean you back in that ridiculous chair—”

“What about the Iron Bank?” She asked.

“ _Fuck_ the Iron Bank,” he growled, meant it.

She gave a little cry that might have been a laugh, “And then what? You’d have your way with me?”

Half-moon smile, “Oh no, love, I would make you wait—”

_(Oh.)_

“—I would kiss you first, long and slow, you know how you like it—”

_(She bites her lip, tosses her head, curls her fingers at the_ romance _of it all.)_

“Then I’d kiss your neck and your chin and right under your ear—”

_(She can feel the phantom of where he used to make that exact progression and it makes her chest ache.)_

“And then I’d untie your gown so I could _see_ you, push up your skirts, you’d have to move to the table at this point—”

“What about the food, wouldn’t it get on my dress?”

_(He has to stop himself from laughing. Only Sansa would think of that, in the throes of fucking herself in the library.)_

Instead: “What a good girl, always so neat—”

_(She has to slow down at that, release some of the pressure, can’t let it be over quite yet.)_

“—but, darling, you look so pretty when you get a little _messy_.”

Breathless, “Do I?”

_(Oh, he just wants to kiss her for that.)_

“Oh yes,” smiled again, paused, whimsical, “Your elbow ends up in the soup.”

She laughed and so he did, too. When their breathing slowed again, she said softly, “Tyrion, love, I’m almost there.”

“Patience, dear.”

Short, hard exhale.

“Good girl,” he stopped, tried to pick up the thread of this ridiculous story, “Oh, yes, you’re on the table, skirts in hand—”

_(She rocks forward, tense and hot and slick, she can hear the obscenity of what they’re doing, in the slide of her fingers.)_

“—I’d kiss your cunt, just like I kissed your lips—”

_(She’s arcing, biting her lip, iron raw now. And she’s just dripping with his hot honey words.)_

“—and when you were begging for it, then I would enter you—”

_(More iron, more honey.)_

“—one finger at a time—”

_(He’s aching, too. All over. Palms at himself, then has to stop so he doesn’t spend in his trousers like a green boy. Grips the bottom edge of the shelf, bites into his hand. But he’s always liked pain, twisted little demon that he is, and so it just tautens the cords in his belly.)_

“—you would be so good, love, so good for me—”

_(There’s a thud behind him and it takes him a moment before he realizes, it is Sansa’s head knocking against the shelf.)_

“—and when you’d had enough, I’d start all over, from the beginning—”

_(She could listen to him talk like this for hours, she thinks, as her toes lick with flame, hours and hours and days and years.)_

“—You would look like Jonquil, darling, so lovely, all spread out, at Maidenpool—”

_(An unbidden memory: “They call it a crisis,” Margaery says, hand starfish-wide on Sansa’s thigh._

_“That sounds terrible!” she exclaims._

_Margaery smirks, “It is only a little death.”)_

He heard her, the quickening breath, a muffled noise like her hand was pressed over her mouth, then silence.

_(What have they done?)_

He waited, listened at her shivering breaths, tripping through the swollen quiet.

“Honey, let me see you.”

Then soft, so faint, he has to strain to hear it, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Probably not, but tonight was probably not a good idea either.”

_(She deserves so much more than this._

_She deserves to be loved loudly, publicly, by a man, a younger man, who would raise an army_ for _her and not against her. She deserves long nights in bed, a man who will take his_ time _with her—_

_Not someone who found pleasure in this, fucking her with his_ voice _of all things, on some floor in some backwater—)_

She did not respond and so he got up, sore with the effort, and walked about the shelf. She lay, sprawled and slumped, fingers still under her skirts, neck blooming in flushes. He approached and she gazed up at him, slightly dazed. He stood before her and she pulled her hand from between her thighs, hip twitching. She considered her fingers, glazed with her. Looked to him again, silent and watching, and shifted to her knees, placed a hand on his shoulder to balance.

“I should—” she started, made like she was going to drag her hand below his belly, but he cannot bear the thought and he shook his head.

She nodded, changed course, brought her fingers to his lips, he caught her wrist and murmured, “Sansa, that’s not why I wanted—”

“I know,” she whispered.

_(I just want to give you_ something. _)_

Flexed her wrist back towards his mouth and he took them in, eyelids fluttering closed, lapping at the drying salt. She was watching him, he could tell, always peculiarly fascinated by the sight. When he was done, he released them. She drew them down through his beard, tapped along his throat, “I always thought I was better than them—Robert and Cersei and Daenerys—not base like them,” pressed her lips to the notch of his clavicle, “And yet here we are.”

“And yet here we are,” he murmured, took her face in his hands, “You’re not base, Sansa.”

She moved to rest her chin against his shoulder, so their temples pressed together, and they spoke, just beyond the others’ ear, “I am not so sure that many people would agree with you.”

“No one, my love, thinks you base,” he argued back, corded his fingers in her hair.

“Robb,” she said, chuckling mirthlessly, “He thinks me a whore.”

_(That_ word. _He tenses in her arms, pushes down the bile, the sound of clinking chains and the bruise from the kickback of his crossbow, heavy in his hand.)_

“Sansa,” he warned.

“On the day after the election, we argued, and I said something, I don’t even remember what now, but I said something and he said back, ‘You sound like him, like the Imp.’” She pressed her lips to his jaw, warm, sweet, “And I keep thinking on it. Because I didn’t. I know you and he knows you and I didn’t sound like you at all. He just wanted me to know that he knew,” she swallowed thickly, “And then he said to me that I was aiding Tywin’s legacy by letting you in my bed.” She pulled back, sat back on her heels, hands still curled about his neck, looked to the side, “Six months, I have hated him. First for being wrong and then for being right. But when I saw you again, I realized it didn’t matter. Because it was no matter if he understood it or not, he had wanted to use _this_ to hurt me.”

_(The way she says it jerks a chain around the chambers of Tyrion’s heart, like they are a sacred thing that Robb has dared to blaspheme.)_

“Your brother is a fool,” Tyrion said, gazing to the ceiling.

_(A heretic, he means.)_

“A fool with my crown and my heart in his hands,” she said, “And yours as well.”

“Fool enough to not know how to use them.”

“Fool enough to try.”

_(“You’re always good to me,” she says, hands in his hair, “Always, always, always.”)_

He stroked her face, thumbed the point of her chin, “It only happened once, darling, alright? A dream brought on by too much wine.”

She sat up again, pressed her lips to his, dry and chaste. Not enough, not even close. Pulled back, “It was a lovely dream.”

He kissed her cheek, “And now it’s over.”

\--

_(Kneeling in the mist of their desire, it feels like snakes and toads, crawling from his mouth, to bind her hands and sit on her chest.)_

_\--_

_(On the fourth day, she wakes up unsteady. She wakes up_ ravenous. _)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: Did you know that all Sanrion writers are legally obligated to write at least one smut scene heavily featuring Tyrion's voice? I actively resist writing smut and yet...here I am....fulfilling my civic duty. 
> 
> Also, in this house, we lean into Sansa's praise kink and pillow princess tendencies. :) 
> 
> In other news, I have recently developed a *thing* for Sansa and Tyrion calling each other "honey". I blame, like most things, Hozier.   
> Chapter title from act ii: "Our Lady of the Underground"
> 
> Thanks for reading! Stay safe and well! <3 <3 <3


	8. is anybody listening? (i open my mouth and nothing comes out)

_(The leaving is easy. That they have practiced.)_

_(He unwinds her arms from about his neck, kisses each wrist, helps her to stand.)_

_(She rolls her neck, pushes back her shoulders, brushes out her skirts, takes a book from the shelf without looking at its cover. By the time she is done, she will be the Ice Maiden again. He turns, almost ashamed, so he cannot see it. It was the seeing that got them here in the first place.)_

_(She always goes first.)_

_(When he hears the door shut, he waits, recites all the verses he can remember of the song of Symeon Star-Eyes._

_Then he goes too.)_

_\--_

Tyrion was woken by Bronn abruptly pulling the hangings back from his bed, “Up, Lord Hand, up!”

Tyrion threw an over his eyes, “Fuck, Bronn. What time is it?”

“The King has summoned us.”

Tyrion blinked blearily up at him. Bronn was already dressed, hair oiled, sword at his hip, rocking impatiently on his toes, he frowned suddenly, “Fuck, were drinking last night? You look like shit.”

Tyrion scrubbed his hand over his face, “No, no. Just working.”

\--

Catelyn came earlier than usual to Sansa’s chambers. It was alright. She had not slept.

_(She wonders, sick in her chest, if Catelyn can see the hunger mapped on her body.)_

“Oh good, you’re already dressed,” Catelyn said, “Come now. Hair pinned up with a neckline like that, what do you think?”

 _(Her mother would be so disturbed by her, the easy way she had opened her legs, the way she had_ asked— _)_

Sansa nodded and sat at the vanity. Catelyn began to brush, said lightly, “How are the talks going?”

 _(He hadn’t even_ touched _her. That is what tugs at her most of all—what kind of girl had Eddard Stark raised if she could find pleasure in the mere promise that a man wanted her?)_

“As well as can be expected. I think it will go in our favor. In the end,” Sansa began to search through her jewelry box for rings, found one of braided silver. 

“You have been spending a lot of time with the young one—”

_(She had clung to him until he told her it was time to go. And still, he had to move her arms for her.)_

“Lord Caspar, yes.”

“Are you courting?” Catelyn Stark had never been anything less than direct.

Sansa considered the ring in her hand, scraped at a bit of tarnish with her nail, “In a way, all negotiations are a form of courting.”

“Will you marry him?” Catelyn twisted a lock of hair, swept it up.

“I am married, Mother, to the land,” she said, folded her hands in her lap—

_(She had pushed her fingers into his mouth, felt the heat and weight of his tongue against them.)_

“Yes, but that is not prohibitive to having a _husband_ ,” Catelyn said, reached for a pin, “And with Talisa not yet pregnant—”

“I am not sure yet,” Sansa slipped the ring on her finger. 

“And Lord Tyrion?” Catelyn said it lightly.

_(She regrets that she did not tell him how she wanted him too.)_

“What of him?”

_(She always, always, always is searching for him, waiting to consume every part of him all the time. It is a rueful rumbling in her very core.)_

“I know you share a friendship with him, but he is not a man amiable to rejection—”

“He is a pragmatic man, above all,” Sansa said sharply.

“But a man like that does not take kindly to being trifled with, Sansa. You are fond of him, I know—”

 _(Underneath all the things that sit at the back of her throat, there is an acrid burning jealousy. He can speak, in spite of all the bindings about them. What sounds like love from him, would sound, she is so sure, like_ handling _from her.)_

Sansa reached behind her, took her mother’s hand and kissed it, said gently, “I will keep it in mind, Mother.”

_(When her mother leaves, she suddenly feels like she can’t breathe, like her chest is caving in and is being pulled apart all at once. She is gasping, almost calls a maidservant for a basin to be sick in, knows it is not quite that. The feeling only lessens when Robb lets himself in, sees her face, “Gods, Sansa, do you feel well?”_

_She draws breath, smiles, “Yes, just tired is all.”)_

\--

_(The first year they circle each other like wolves. He is still drinking. He is mourning his brother, his sister, his once-queen. He has finally fallen in love with his wife who is now a friend and who now lives alone and far away in a new, strange land._

_He goes to her, falls a bit more in love with her, advises her, hammers out a trade deal, tells her that he is in love with her, makes her cry. It all feels a bit like a game, like they are playing at being grown._

_Then, she executes Barbrey Dustin._

_She is so sad about it, he can see. And he goes to her. And she whispers to him why she is so sad about it. He kisses her. She kisses him. And then she puts his hand between her legs, tells him that she wants him please.)_

\--

Tyrion pulled on a clean shirt, splashed his face with water, drank some from his hands to wet his mouth, then left for the King’s chambers.

Davos was already there when he and Bronn arrived. Stood in the doorway.

_(It occurs to him, not for the first time, that his entirety, his inheritance, his name, his very life is tied to the goodwill of this boy-god.)_

Bran was in his chair, dressed and crowned, facing the narrow window that looked out over the sea. He did not look at them as they entered, waited, then said, “It has become clear that the raven telling of the Iron Bank’s defeat in Norvos will not arrive in time,” Bran said slowly, “I will need to confer with the Queen but I believe it would be in all of our best interest if I reveal the news.”

“In a suitably dramatic way?” Davos supplied.

Smile, “Naturally, Lord Davos.”

He went on like this for some time. 

Tyrion would need to push Janos further along.

Bronn would do well to emphasize the revaluation of the Six Kingdoms’ currency.

Davos was needed to assist the Princess Arya in her expedition preparations today, unnecessary for him to meet with the Bank today.

Bran dismissed all of them, but then said, “Wait, Lord Tyrion, one more thing.”

Tyrion stayed.

Bran stayed focused on the window, “Have you clarified Galladon’s fostering at Winterfell?”

_(That had been one of the things he had meant to talk to Sansa about last night. He had even written down on a precious little list, still folded, in the breast pocket of yesterday’s clothes.)_

“I believe Brienne was quite clear about her intentions to have the boy go North.”

“Have you confirmed the details with the Queen?”

Tyrion pursed his lips, “No. I will speak with her later on.”

“Good.” Bran fell silent again. Then, “And your joints? Do they ache today?”

“No, my lord, I feel quite well.”

_(He can almost hear Tywin: willful, lustful, stubborn creature.)_

Bran did not respond. Tyrion refused to move either, stared at the back of his god’s head, listening to the rush and hiss of the waves, until Bran finally sighed and said, “You are dismissed, Lord Hand.”

\--

_(The second year still feels a bit like sport. It has been so long without sex. Forever and a day. And so, they fuck_ everywhere. _He takes her in the storage room on a pile of grain sacks, yes, then the library, then atop the table in her solar. Sport, he tells himself as he skims his hand up her thigh in the glass garden, just a game of risk._

_Until she tells him she wants to show him something. Abruptly they are not playing anymore._

_She lets him take off her gown, hides her face in the pillows as he works his mouth and his fingers down her back. He cannot lie—it is an ugly thing to look at, it is not smooth as marble or soft as velvet or white as snow. It is her girlhood, interrupted._

_This perfect girl, he thinks, then says, you perfect girl._

_She shudders. She twists her hands in the sheets. She is enduring, steeling herself against his hands and his voice. This is something they must do, something he must see, he knows she feels, if they are to go on.)_

\--

She was early for the morning meal though Jon and Arya, sweating from the yard, were there, as were Bartholomew and Caspar and Davos and Bronn. She sat next to Caspar and leaning close said, “Would you like to take a walk, Caspar? Before we meet.”

“Yes, that sounds lovely, Your Grace.”

Tyrion entered then, boisterous, as usual—

_(This part is easy, too, he thinks.)_

\--greeting Brienne loudly, ruffling Galladon’s hair. He sat with Davos and Bronn, far down the table from her, called Lord Flint over to tell him a filthy jape that makes him choke on the apple he had been gnawing. She turned back to Caspar.

She said quietly, “Would right after this be acceptable?”

Caspar nodded, cow-eyed, kissed her hand, “That would be _more_ than acceptable.”

She smiled at him and then leaned over to Lady Flint, “You will attend the meeting this morning?”

“Yes, of course, Your Grace.”

 _(She is quiet but, oh, when she_ does _speak—_

 _Last night, she had spoken of_ ‘this _’. Like love was tangible, a place to go, a thing to hold._

_It makes him a little madder for her.)_

\--

_(That conference is a strange little interlude. The second year’s games had ended in battle—ended with naked souls, ended with her telling him that she loved him, was in love with him, was so, so sorry. He tells himself that she is fooling herself, knows though that Sansa Stark is a terrible liar._

_Jon and Arya find out about them, too, and Bronn and Davos and Brienne realize it. And what has been secret suddenly is not. Does not stop them from shushing each other between the sheets, alternating hands over mouths to cover moans and declarations as if what they were building together needed voices to make it true.)_

_\--_

He was late to the morning meal.

_(He sows chaos wherever he steps, she thinks, as she watches him rouse each member of the sleepy hall in turn with barbs and jests. Ignores the hurricane that he has set to stirring in her belly.)_

Davos and Bronn had saved him a place and several rashers of bacon.

 _(She knows that he hates her silence. But, she thinks, they have never_ really _needed words._

 _He looks at her over Davos’ shoulder, raises an eyebrow:_ Are you alright?

 _She nods imperceptibly,_ I will be. You?

 _His corner of his mouth lifts,_ I will be. _)_

He called to Galladon, “Gal, come sit with me, sweet boy. I have a story to tell you.”

\--

_(_ _The third, the fourth, the fifth year do not feel at all like games._

_He knows, has always assumed, that this was ephemeral. That she would have to marry, no matter what she said, that there was always the possibility of war between them, no matter their devotion to peace._

_But all of that seems like pale paranoia, compared to the brush of her hair over his skin and the movement of her hips over his and his name, an ashy whisper in her mouth. Sex seems less like madness, kisses less like thievery, the longer_ this _goes on._

 _She likes the quiet nights, she murmurs low to him once, lips against his throat, skin blue in the dark, it makes her feel—well, she says_ tranquil _. He knows what she means: in the dark and the silence, it is easy to pretend that they are common, just nameless bodies in love, no different than any other.)_

\--

She and Caspar went directly to the godswood after the morning meal.

_(They must look a picture—she is all in silver-trimmed lace and his doublet is threaded with gold. They must shine like songs in the deep morning sun._

_Trick of the light, that’s all she is.)_

They speak for awhile about all the incidental things—the books they have read, the places they have seen—then Caspar pulled her to lean against a tree, stood above her, and then said, low, “I have never met a woman like you.”

_(He puts his hand at her waist, just above the small of her back, to guide her. She has never been wooed, not like this, not since she was a child.)_

She put her hand against the side of his face, “I have never met someone like you.”

He breathed hotly, “I think I may love you.”

She smiled a little, “Do you? It’s only been three days, I mean—”

“No, no, I know no one will ever match you.”

“You are too kind, my lord.”

“No, _you_ are, Your Grace.”

“Call me Sansa.”

“Sansa, you are kind and courteous and fierce and intelligent and beautiful,” he was babbling now.

_(If he is following a script written by himself or his uncle, or if he believes what he is telling her, it will not matter in the end. It makes her terribly, unbearably sad.)_

She cannot lie: “I do not deserve your praise.”

“You do,” he insisted, “You are everything that a Queen should be—”

“I thank you for that,” meant it. Then it was her turn, she took in a trembling breath, closed her eyes, “I think you are handsome and good; I think you are wise in your counsel. Our friendship has become invaluable to me—”

He cut in, “My letters? You liked my letters?”

_(Yes.)_

“I think you are kind, my lord. You make me happy.” 

_(When she opens her eyes, making sure to flutter her lashes as she does, she finds she has to look up and not down.)_

“Your _friendship_ is invaluable to me, too,” Lord Caspar said. He took her hand, squeezed it.

She smiled up at him, “Shall we continue? We have not gone this way before.”

_(She says it to him, but she is looking over his shoulder. She sees Petyr._

_“Where have you been?” she asks him._

_He shrugged, “You have been busy, sweetling. But I am here now.”)_

\--

Tyrion met with Janos at the training yard, watching Jon run Arya’s men run through their paces.

“Have you given it much thought? My offer?”

Janos sighed, stroked the edges of his moustache, “Yes. How long would it take to mine it?”

“Did I not mention? It already is mined. Left over from the war.”

The banker glanced down at him in surprise, “Convenient.”

“Very. You are at war and I am not.”

“The city of Norvos is at war,” Janos corrected, bounced a little on his toes.

“With your money against your nephew,” Tyrion said, “Three tons of dragon glass is enough to equip your army to the teeth.”

“And if I do this what do you get?”

“Coin, I should hope.”

Janos nodded, smiling slightly, “And my eternal gratitude.”

“Well, naturally,” Tyrion grinned.

“I will think on it, Lord Hand.”

Tyrion took his arm, “I hope that you do. For your own sake.”

Janos left shortly after that and Jon approached him from across the yard, wiping his face with a cloth, grumbled, “You are making deals behind Sansa’s back.”

Not a question.

Tyrion smiled, “I assure you, very little occurs without your sister knowing.”

“She and that Caspar—”

Tyrion looked to the sky, “Very little occurs without me knowing either.”

“She told me it was your idea,” Jon was studying him curiously.

“Yes, and Lord Janos was hers,” Tyrion shrugged, made to go, “Do you want a drink tonight?”

Jon smiled at him, “I am training with Arya tonight but perhaps tomorrow.”

Tyrion winked, “I will hold you to that, Lord Snow.”

\--

_(The last thing—the absolute last thing—she needs today is to hear is his voice. But he has never learned quiet.)_

They meet in the afternoon.

Sit in their usual chairs.

Did the usual dance.

_(He had not even needed to touch her, he thinks, with a puff of pride. She flushes, he notes, when he leans in to ask about interest rates. He meant what he said—she is so pretty when things get messy.)_

\--

_(He goes to her in the sixth year, so foolhardily confident in this. He finds her, for the first time, not_ _alone. He finds, for the first time, that noiselessness is not going to be enough._

_But they leave each other in the end of it all.)_

\--

Tyrion lingered after the meeting, “Do you want a drink, Your Grace?”

She considered him, “Is that a good idea, Lord Hand?”

_(He has spent six years trying to undo her._

_But she is so composed even with the Imp licking at her cunt, even with his cock in her mouth. She crests with a bite to her lip and not a hair out of place.)_

“We’re friends. Friends drink together,” Still she hesitated, so he said, “It’s an hour before dinner. Perfectly respectable, Your Grace.”

“Fine. Tea.”

“Tea, then.”

They waited, silence thick and tarred between them, until the maidservants brought the tea service. He poured her cup, but she put her hand over his and added her own milk.

For once, it was Sansa who started, “I heard your talk with Janos went well today.”

“Yes,” Tyrion said, “About that—Bran says that the raven coming with news of Norvos will be delayed. He will do it himself.”

“Of course, he will,” Sansa said quietly, “That is fine.”

“And Caspar?”

“I fear he may propose sooner than we intend,” Sansa said.

“The rumor is that you will accept,” Tyrion said delicately, drummed the tips of his fingers against the rim of his cup.

“I don’t know.”

He looked to her then, surprised. She continued, “I need an heir, Tyrion, Talisa isn’t with child and—”

“And you think Caspar, the bastard banker, is the best father for your children?”

“And who would you suggest? I need an heir, I need money—”

“You need alliances, Sansa,” he said harshly, shook his head, “Who would I suggest? Almost anyone else. The Dornish prince, the Lysene ambassador—someone whose organization you are not trying to actively undermine on the continent.”

“Are you angry with me?” she said.

“You are talking about undoing a plan that took months to put in place,” Tyrion scoffed, “Your Grace, I am certainly not pleased.”

“If Robb and Talisa cannot have a child, there will be no heir.”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, “Perhaps the election was a good thing then. Proved your system can work—”

“That is your plan when Bran goes.”

“Yes,” he said, “We will put forth a candidate, our chosen successor, hold an election and see. And hope.”

“And how has the rest of the council taken to that plan?” He did not answer her and so Sansa sighed, “If I put forth a candidate from the Flints, the Manderlys will see it as an insult. If I put forth a candidate from the new houses, the older ones will rebel—”

“Well, then, perhaps Talisa will fall pregnant. It has only been six months and she could have been drinking moon tea before that. I am sure that takes time—”

She leaned forward, eyes wide and earnest, “I have been given charge of an infant nation, everything that I do or do not determines whether we live or die in the birthing bed. And if I cannot do this—”

“We are but two of many midwives, Sansa,” he said, took her hand, “With Robb, you do not need to be the lynchpin in the North anymore.”

“If I died tomorrow or next week or next year, it would be chaos.”

“You do not give him nearly enough credit, Sansa.”

She took a sip of her tea, “We open ourselves up to all manner of—” broke off for a moment, then a spark, she turned to him suddenly, “You would invade, wouldn’t you?”

He stared at her for a moment, then said slowly, eyes hard, “I would assert my King’s claim to his ancestral seat, yes.”

“We have an agreement—”

“ _We_ have an agreement, I signed a deal with Sansa Stark, not with the North.”

She scoffed and he groaned, “Now are you angry with me?”

“You said you would invade my country if I died!” she set her cup down, tart, “Should I have this tasted?”

“No, darling, that is rather your method, isn’t it?”

 _(Oh, this is the part of him that she does_ not _like.)_

They glared at each other.

_(It is so easy, with the kisses sealed against her breast and the slide of hands down his back, to tuck away the knives pointed at each other’s throats.)_

Sansa, for once, lowered first, “You would be a terrible assassin anyway. You would drink all the wine you intended to poison.”

_(It’s a poor, mean jape. But he smiles. And it’s enough.)_

He said, “I could always try and talk you to death.”

_(Oh, he is too provocative by half.)_

He gripped her hand a little tighter, now grave and low, “I cannot bear it, the thought of a world without you—”

“I know.”

_(She knows because she cannot, is not, bearing the thought of being without him.)_

He kissed her knuckles.

_(She wants to kiss him so very badly, she wants to climb into his lap right here, bury her face in his neck. She told the truth last night; she is so sick to death of wanting._

_But afternoon light is pouring through the windows, pooling the shadows at their feet.)_

“Last night—” he started.

“Last night was a dream brought on by too much wine,” she recited.

 _(Her mother, her brothers, her sister, her father would be so_ disturbed _by her—)_

“Neither of us drink anymore, Your Grace.”

“No,” she said, “Tyrion, please.”

_(You promised to be kind.)_

“I am sorry, I should not have said—we got caught up—”

“No, no,” she took a breath, “I think it would be easy to say that what happened, has happened, was bigger than either of us, some sort of inevitability. But I think that is dishonest. It was a failing of will. It was a choice. A choice that we made together.”

_(She is quiet, it is true. Oh, but when she does speak—She cannot lie. Her truths streams from her mouth, piles gold coins and jewels and stinking rose petals all about them.)_

He nodded, for once, the silent one, the one not wanting to speak of it. She could not read his eyes, but she thought he must agree.

She leaned down now, kissed the back of his hand, “Thank you for the tea, my lord.”

\--

_(He realizes after she leaves that he had still never asked about Gal.)_

\--

She sat with Caspar at dinner and he smiled as she sat, “Hello, Sansa.”

“Hello, Caspar.”

The whole hall was watching them—Bronn and Davos with the eyes of an observant maester, Jon with confusion, Catelyn with concern, Arya with barely concealed disgust—and she leaned in, placed an elbow on his chair—

 _(She should tell him:_ I am in love with someone else. I am using you to remember someone else.

_She is cruel and she is weak, though, and so she does not.)_

She stayed, hanging on his chair, until the end of the meal.

\--

Tyrion skipped supper, went to the library. It was not long past the dinner hour when Talisa joined him.

She sat across from him, “I have not had much time to speak with you, my lord.”

“Well, that is always the way with visits like these,” he said, setting aside his book, “Besides, I have not seen much of any of your party.”

Talisa smiled a little, “Yes, we are all adrift—Jon and Arya have been busy and I—” she broke off, seemed to think about what to say next before: “I was not pregnant this moonturn.”

“Ah,” he said. Like it was fresh news.

“It was a disappointment,” she said.

“I am sure.”

“Especially for the queen.”

He refused to react, to pass judgement, said instead, “I am sure she is just concerned for you.”

“Oh, I am sure that is what she thinks, too,” Talisa said, not unkind, “But I am not ignorant to the strain my womb is putting on her. And the Small Council. And the people of the North.”

Tyrion chuckled a little, said, “No queen is safe on the throne until they have an heir.”

Talisa hummed, “Still, it takes the joy out of child-making—”

Tyrion laughed, “Now _that,_ my lady, is entirely incumbent on the Prince—”

She blushed furiously, “Oh, I didn’t mean that—more, it must be terrible for the child. I was grateful with Little Ned that—” she shook her head, “I see the way it—the pressure, I mean—makes Robb—It will just be a different way of raising a child.”

_(He wants to say: The question is really: How can you truly love a child who will spend the rest of your lifetime waiting for your death?_

_But Sansa is correct sometimes. Silence can be kinder.)_

Talisa waved her hand, “Anyway.” She cocked her head, looked him up and down, “And how is the queen?”

“Well, I am sure. I did not go to dinner; did she appear ill?”

Talisa seemed to be examining him, “She appeared quite enamored of Lord Caspar.”

“Well, Lord Caspar is quite handsome and young—”

“He is all those things, yes,” Talisa interrupted, “I was wondering if she was alright because last night, I went to her chambers—”

_(His chest is suddenly very, very heavy.)_

“—my maid forgot my sewing kit, you see—”

“She should be whipped in the streets,” he heard himself say.

_(“It was a failure of will,” she had said this afternoon.)_

Talisa smiled indulgently, “Perhaps but I needed a thimble and so I went to Sansa’s chambers only to find her not there—”

 _(Anyone could have walked in. Anyone could have heard them—heard_ him— _wrapping her in filthy gossamer—)_

“And that matters to me how?”

“The Queen had retired for the night and yet she was not in her chambers, it just—”

 _(“Robb, he thinks me a whore,” she had said, “He wanted to use_ this _to hurt me.”_

_A place to go, he thinks madly, a thing to hold._

_This, this very moment, this is why they don’t speak of it.)_

He cut her off, “Is this a threat, Princess Talisa?”

She looked surprised, “My lord—”

“I would consider us friends, my lady,” he said, “but I told your husband once and I will tell you, it really is best if my interest in you remains minimal.”

She started again, “Tyrion, really—”

“Sansa is merciful. I am not,” Tyrion set his jaw, “You would do well to remember it.” 

Talisa considered him a moment, almost disappointed, he could not bring himself to care, she said finally, “I would not dream of hurting my family, Lord Hand.” Then, “But it is no use pretending. You know that I know about you. I know that she gave you up. It was not difficult to figure out why. Robb told me that you told him that you loved her.”

_(They don’t speak of it. Most of all, not with others._

_A failure of will, she would say.)_

She continued, “I am your friend, Tyrion, and I am trying to be hers.”

He examined her, the way the firelight threw bruising shadows across her face. 

She was a lovely woman, indeed. A woman that it would be exceedingly difficult to pretend to, a woman for whom silence would never be enough. Useless, he decided.

Talisa asked finally, “Why her? Of all the women in the world?”

 _(There’s a list, locked in a box atop his bedside table with their wedding bands, and it starts with how he awoke the morning after their wedding to her gown tucked under his head and ends with the postscripts on her letters:_ Tell me how you are, how do you pass your days? _)_

He almost laughed, “Why the beautiful queen of an independent kingdom? What a ridiculous question.”

“You know what I meant—there are many less complicated women. More _available_ women.”

“Those women tend to not want the kinslaying Lannister Imp.”

“Some of them might. You don’t _know_ that.”

He looked to her again.

_(Wants to say: We barely knew each other and yet still we understood each other better than most, we barely knew each other and yet still we were friends, we barely knew each other and yet still we stood at the end of the world together and it was enough.)_

Tyrion said: “She’s a good woman, my lady.”

_(Wants to add: She thinks me kind. She thinks I am the best of them.)_

He added: “We have an understanding of each other.”

_(He cannot say that he loves her because she does not care that he’s little or that he’s killed men and women._

_A mistruth._

_It’s because she does.)_

“For what it’s worth, I think it is noble what you have done.”

He raised an eyebrow—

_(Thinks of Sansa’s tears in his neck, thinks of her touching herself, sighing, to his whispers, hiding from his eyes like it made any of it better—)_

“I think you’ll find very little nobility in it, my lady.”

Talisa smiled sadly, “My marriage caused the death of seventy-five men, thirty-one women, five children, and my husband’s direwolf. When they could not find Robb’s body, they cut off another man’s head and sewed the wolf’s head onto his body. They threw an old woman into the river so they could say it was Lady Catelyn.”

“You were betrayed.”

“We betrayed first,” Talisa said, “He was supposed to marry the Frey girl. The one who married Edmure Tully. But he couldn’t— _we_ couldn’t—” she sighed shortly, “We were young. And—it all seemed so charmed—he was so perfect, like a song, almost—”

_(Oh, he knows this tale.)_

“—but I think about them all the time. Those men and those women—they were good people, the men there. I thought about it when I had Ned. He was such a _good_ boy and Robb was so _good_ with him. But all I could think about was that one day—one day, we would have to tell him. Tell him that we had killed a hundred people so he could live.”

“Lady Talisa—”

_(Next on his tongue: Cersei would not have even batted an eye. Anything to keep Jaime in her bed, anything to keep their children at her breast. Stops himself because he realizes—she never knew his family. Only the Starks.)_

She interrupted: “I am sorry, Tyrion. I am sorry for you and her. But—” she shook her head, “some tragedies are victories in truth.”

\--

He was walking back to his chambers when Davos intercepted him, “Lord Tyrion, we are playing cards in the hall. Come join us.”

“Alright,” he said, so very tired, “Alright.”

He followed Davos back to the hall. Robb lounged, arm slung across his sister’s back, laughing with Bronn. Sansa looked up—

 _(She raises an eyebrow,_ Hello.

 _He twists his lips,_ Hello, sweetheart. _)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from act ii song "Flowers" 
> 
> I promise you....we will soon move on from Sanrion angst...to a whole, new, exciting variety of Stark angst next chapter. Cheers! 
> 
> Thank you for all the kind comments/kudos! They are all appreciated! <3 
> 
> I hope everyone is keeping safe and healthy! <3 <3 <3


	9. when the gods are having a fight, everybody else better hold on tight

_(Bran and Arya are tangled on the floor, knocking their legs together. Rickon is in the cradle, Jon and Theon are jostling for a seat on the narrow settee. She is tucked under Robb’s arm, trying to be straight-backed as Septa Mordane had told her, under the weight of his arm._

_Old Nan tells them a story: “Once there was a kind king and queen who had seven sons and one daughter. The queen had a wicked sister, a witch, who thought she should rule—”_

_“That’s you,” Arya says to Sansa, sticking out her tongue._

_“That makes you a boy,” Sansa says primly._

_But Arya was not listening, rolling over Bran’s back.)_

\--

After supper, Janos called to his party to review materials for the next day. Caspar departed, kissing her hand.

Tyrion left, too, not long after.

The crowd in the hall slowly began to dwindle.

Catelyn went to bed.

Brienne carried off Galladon, attempting to quiet him as he protested loudly.

Talisa left, too, absently slid her arm across Robb’s shoulders as she left, though he was so deeply engaged in a conversation with Davos, he barely looked up, reached up to touch her hand a hairsbreadth too late.

Sansa had no particular desire to return to her chambers—

_(Petyr’s there. She just knows it.)_

_(There so much of her that wants to go to the library, just to see if he was there._

_Do it again, she would tell him, see if you can do it again.)_

\--and so, when Robb slid into Caspar’s seat and said, “Davos has a new card game from Lys—want to play?” she nodded.

_(She wonders if it is a prerequisite for Bran's council, too--that they all be afraid of lonely chambers.)_

Robb called across the hall to Jon, “Jon, want to play?”

But Jon shook his head, “Arya and I are going to the yard—”

Robb waved his hand, “For the third time today? Honestly, Jon—”

“I can’t become a lazy, indolent lord like you—”

Robb made an offended scoff, then smiled, “Perhaps I’ll join you later.”

“You said that this morning—”

“Well, _some_ of us are trying to make an heir to the throne!” Robb said. Bronn raised a salute.

_(She_ knows _he is teasing. She_ knows _he is teasing Jon. She_ knows _that he is not even looking to her._

_But here is what else she knows—Robb has not been to Talisa’s chambers in two nights.)_

Jon waved him off. He left, with Arya following, not saying a word.

Robb leaned in then, arm on the chair, said low, “Do you think he’s well?”

“Who, Jon?”

“Yes, he’s been—” Robb waved his hand, “Not here.”

“We have been so consumed by the talks,” Sansa said, “We have had little time for anyone.”

Robb shrugged, “I suppose.”

_(It has been three days and she has spent little time with anyone from the North or the South: Brienne, Davos, Bran, even Bronn. She has been_ negligent _. It is just another weight to hang about her neck.)_

Robb said, smiling, “Well, you have spent any free moment with Caspar.”

She ignored him.

He continued, “Really, Sansa, I know he’s handsome, but he is dull.”

“He has a great deal of money,” she said quietly.

“Sansa, I know I said—”

“It will be fine,” she said.

Robb took her chin between his thumb and forefinger—

_(All Ned.)_

\--looked at her, “I am your Hand, Sansa, and a Prince of the Realm. It does no good to keep me out of any marriage agreements.”

“I am not _making_ any marriage agreements.”

_(Yet.)_

“But you like him?”

_(All Cat.)_

“I don’t know.”

_(She had said that to Tyrion today._

I don’t know.

_Tyrion is right about her. She cannot help but push, push and push and push.)_

He sighed, dropped his hand to pick up his cup, “Fine.” Then a beat, “Have you seen Arya’s new recruits?”

“Not yet.”

Robb looked at her again, warned, not unkind, “Sansa.”

But then Davos is shouting down the table, calling them to gather, then leaving because they simply could not have a game like this without the Imp himself.

_(They_ could, _she feels very strongly, but there is nothing that can be said against it.)_

He returned shortly with Tyrion in tow—

_(_ Hello, darling, _she says to him._

Hello, _he says back.)_

\--

_(“—and so she poisoned the queen and killed her. The king married the queen’s sister and had more children with her. The new queen grew jealous of the seven sons and daughter and one day she took them on a trip away from the castle and one by one turned them each to swans and shooed them away. Before she could turn the daughter into a swan, the girl’s brothers returned and swept her away.”_

_Theon rolled his eyes, poked Jon’s side, but Jon stayed focused on Old Nan.)_

\--

The game was soon forgotten in the face of tale-telling and japes, cards splayed in front of them—

_(Robb and Bronn and Davos—they all speak the same language. She wonders a little about where Robb learned it.)_

_(Jon was different, they said, when he returned from the dead. Something happened when the Red Woman had whispered him to being, in that valley between sleeping and living, as the air rushed through blue tunnels into his lungs and throat and mouth—_

_There had been a cleaving._

_He’s not the same, Sam had whispered to her when she rode into King’s Landing, he’s not like he was._

_She looks to Robb as he knocks elbows with Bronn.)_

Well, it started as story sharing—the disastrous roast hog at Davos’ son’s wedding, Bronn’s wife’s sister’s husband’s latest foolery. But, always, inevitably, it turned to statecraft.

“I will say,” Davos was saying, “that I am concerned about heirs. For both of you.”

Tyrion said, carefully peeling an orange, “Both countries have electoral systems, neither needs to have children.”

Bronn rolled his eyes, “What a wonderful way to avoid a civil war.”

Sansa said, smirking, “Robb’s children will be my heirs. Though, I would gladly send one to the South if you find yourself in need.”

Tyrion hid his smile in his goblet. He should not find her threats charming. And yet. 

Davos narrowed his eyes, “The offer is appreciated but unnecessary.”

Robb joined in, smiling slightly, “Though if you should ever reconsider, Lord Davos, the offer will always stand.”

“You really will not marry?” Bronn said.

“I already am. I wed the North.”

Davos said, more genteelly, “That never stopped the Kings of Winter from having a consort.”

He cast a subtle look to Tyrion who was separating each section of his orange with more delicacy than was strictly necessary.

Sansa smiled, “Well, I am a Queen of Winter. Not King.”

“What about King Snow?” Bronn said, pouring himself more wine, “Or is even he not Northern enough for you?”

She and Tyrion, both, met their gazes across the table.

\--

_(“The eight of them flew to a faraway land where they met with another witch—a good one this time—who heard their plight. She let them live in her cottage and told the girl of a patch of magical nettles that when woven together into tunics would restore the princes to her. But, the fairy warned, this cure would only work if the girl could remain silent for one year and a day.”)_

\--

“You do insult the queen, ser.” Robb sat forward, frowning, drummed his fingers on the table.

Bronn shrugged, “Just a suggestion, my lord.”

“They are brother and sister, my lord. We are not Targaryens,” Robb said, voice tight, “Or Lannisters.”

She looked to Tyrion again, but he had taken deep interest in pulling the fiber from the ridge of an orange slice.

“Well, you aren’t,” Bronn said, snorting.

Too late, he seemed to realize that everyone else had fallen silent.

\--

_(“And so there they settled. During the day, the brothers would fly as swans and the girl would gather and weave the nettles, never speaking and never minding the cuts on her hands, and at night, the brothers would return to the cottage in their true, human forms.”)_

\--

“What is he talking about, Sansa?” Robb said. 

_(They are about to make a scene. A scene in front of friends, mayhap, but friends who want access to trade routes and better lumber pricing and to partner on whale oil and have spies in her court—)_

Tried to brush it aside, “Do not concern yourself, Robb. It is nothing.”

“Sansa,” a warning, repeated, “What does he mean by this?”

Davos tried to interject, “Nothing, my Prince, Lord Blackwater has overindulged I am afraid.”

Robb ignored him, warned again, “Sansa.”

“It is not for me to say, Robb,” met his eyes, “Please, Robb. Talk to Jon.”

Robb stood suddenly, pushed his chair away, and made for the door. Sansa stood and hurried after him.

She could hear distantly, Davos say tiredly, “Well done, Bronn.”

\--

_(“One day, while the brothers were off flying, a rich and powerful king rode by and caught sight of the girl, gathering her nettles. He loved her instantly and carried her away to his castle and married her. But even after the girl was queen, she continued to weave the nettles and knit the tunics throughout the day, not speaking. The king’s mother did not like the girl and suspected that she was a witch. She tried to convince the king, beg him to give up his queen, but he refused.”)_

\--

Robb charged down the hall, lurching through the corridors. 

She trailed behind him, trying to keep up with him, “Robb, please, please, Robb—”

He spun on her, stopping her, approached her, backed her against the wall, “Sansa, when will it end?”

“Robb—”  
“You are all so chockful of secrets, Sansa, you and Bran and Arya and Jon.”

_(No man should ever be this close to her again._

_He could curl his hands around her throat and pinch the life out of her, leave bruises on her wrists. There is no one here, they are alone, stupid girl to leave the safety of the hall, and who would stop him anyway, the second most powerful person in the kingdom—_

_But his hands stay fisted at his sides, twist in his hair, tear at his own face.)_

\--“It is not my secret to tell, Robb, please.”

“Did you and Jon—I thought the Imp—Sansa, tell me he didn’t—”

“Gods, no, Robb, no.”

Robb covered his face in his hands, “Then what?”

She swallowed thickly, “Just talk to Jon.”

He turned away from her again and continued, racing, racing. She followed, tripping on her skirts.

_(“So much for dignity,” Petyr said, panting beside her, always beside her._

_She held onto his hand for comfort.)_

\--

_(“One unfortunate day, the girl ran out of nettles and was forced to seek out the good witch to guide her to more in the patch of woods beyond the castle. The king’s mother followed her there, watched her meet with the good witch, and concluded that she was right. When she brought this evidence to the king, he had no choice but to put her on trial.”)_

\--

He hurried down the steps and pushed the door outside. She shocked and shivered at the cold air. Robb strode across the front of the keep towards the modest training yard.

Jon and Arya were there in the yard, Arya perched on a fence post, watching Jon demonstrate some complicated trick with his sword. She and Robb are hurtling towards them—

_(It reminds her of riding to Petyr’s camp, where distance had seemed so immaterial.)_

“Snow!” Robb called across the yard.

Jon turned as he saw them, lowered his sword, “Robb—”

Robb stopped short of the fence, “Do you intend to marry Sansa?”

Arya climbed down from the post, like a cat on the defensive.

“What?” Jon exclaimed.

Robb gestured to the castle, “Lord Bronn—damn him—is in there jesting that you should marry her like some—some degenerate.”

Jon stared at him.

Robb said again, “Where is the jape, Jon?” 

Jon looked to Sansa, then to Arya, then back to Sansa, then buried the tip of his sword in the soft sand, then said slowly, “There is no jape. A marriage has been suggested between us for quite some time.”

“That is disgusting,” Robb spat, “You would consider—your own sister—"

Jon was silent, cast his eyes to the ground, then looked up—

_(Things are about to change. Oh Gods, oh Gods—)_

“She is not my sister, Robb.”

\--

_(“The girl had to be dragged to the dungeons. She was put in a cell that was dark except for one barred. But every night, by the light of the moon, her brothers visited her. Without fail.”)_

\--

“ _What_?”

Jon raised his chin, “I am not your brother, Robb.”

Robb frowned, “What do you—”

“Eddard Stark is not my father.”

Robb began to shake his head, “No, no—this is—you’re mad—”

“Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark were in love. They eloped and had a child—me. She made Father promise not to tell.”

“King Robert’s rebellion—”

Sansa finished for him, “A mistruth. Built on the hopes of rejected man.”

There was a long, terrible silence.

Arya said, “He is still our brother, Robb.”

Sansa’s breath strained against the tightness of her ribs.

Robb ignored her, “You had six months and you did not tell me.” Abruptly, Robb moved, climbed the fence, legs swinging, “You bastard.”

He shoved Jon, who remained still, “You did not tell me,” he punched into Jon’s shoulder.

Jon started at that, pushed back.

Robb charged at him, arms about his middle. Arya tried to wedge herself between them, “Robb, Jon—” but they elbowed her off.

Jon kicked at Robb’s stomach, managed to tumble away from him, swung wildly at Robb’s face, missed. Robb seized forward, knocking Jon’s fists out of the way, hands to Jon’s throat, pressing his thumbs to the softness under the hook of Jon’s jaw, shook Jon’s head, “You fucking dare call me a craven—”

Jon forced his head forward, cracking it against Robb’s, who tripped back at the force. They tussled. Pulled at each other’s limbs, slapping at the tenderness of their throats, underarms, groin. Robb got hold of Jon again, about his shoulders, a perverse inverse of the embrace they had shared when Jon had first arrived at Winterfell.

_(She is screaming, shouting, wringing her hands: Please, please, please, please. Don’t hurt him, Robb._

_No, Jon, please, please let him go, please, Jon._

_Arya tried to separate them again, failed, and circled them as they fought in the dirt.)_

Jon wrenched away, with another flurry of kicks to Robb’s knees, snarled, “I do dare and an oathbreaker, too.”

Robb punched then. Jon’s head snapped back. He staggered back a bit, winded. Leaned down, arms resting on his thighs, breathing hard, and spat pink froth.

_(She has a vision suddenly:_

_Robb atop Jon, like Jon had straddled Ramsay, pummeling him into the dirt in a spray of blood and bile, cracking the fine bones of his face, her and Arya tugging at his shoulder, shaken off like gnats—)_

\--bared his teeth—

_(Like a wolf, she thinks.)_

\--then he went for Robb again, clutching at each other’s shoulders, pushing against the other. Jon staggered back, looked about to fall—

_(All she can think is: Anyone but Jon. Let it be anyone, anyone in the world but Jon.)_

“Robb!” It was Talisa, hurrying from the steps, in her nightgown, hair braided for sleep, Tyrion jogging after her, “Robb! Stop!”

Neither seemed to hear her, still gripping the other’s shoulders, edging closer to the others’ necks.

“Stop! Robb!”

He heeded her voice this time and with a final push, disengaged, dropped his hands from Jon’s body, let them hang by his side. Jon stepped back, wiped his nose of spittle against his shoulder, hands raised.

_(In the fickle moon-shadows, they look like twins.)_

Talisa had reached the fence, reached across, grazed her knuckles along his cheekbone, “Oh, my love.”

_(She wants—_

_But Arya is so far away, and Jon is bleeding from the lip.)_

At her touch, Robb shivered, a body-length tremor.

Then he began to weep. Not soft, silent tears, long, loud, punched-out sobs, sobs that wracked his body, jerked his torso like he was being pummeled by invisible hands. Talisa guided his head to her breast, stroked his hair.

Jon made to go to him, but Talisa shook her head, held out her hand over Robb’s shaking shoulders, “Not tonight, King Snow.”

Arya stepped to Jon, “Come on, Jon, let’s take a walk.”

Jon nodded dazedly and she took his elbow. They disappeared into the shadows, towards the stables.

Sansa stared. Robb shaking and whining, keening. She felt pulled like she should embrace him too—she felt a weight on her hand. Looked down.

It was Tyrion.

He kissed her knuckles. She nodded. He led her away.

\--

_(“At the trial, the girl kept her vow of silence even though it meant she could not speak in her own defense and was found guilty and sentenced to die.”)_

\--

_(He is six and she is four._

_“Robb?” she calls out in the night, across the nursery, soft sobbing, “Robb.”_

_“What is it?”_

_“I had a nightmare.”_

_Muffled sigh, “Come in then.”_

_She slipped from between the covers, padded to other side of the nursery, crawled in, nestled against his side, “Hush, Sansa,” he says, a gentle facsimile of their mother, “I’m here.”_

_But once Sansa starts to cry, she has always had a hard time stopping.)_

\--

_(“But she kept knitting, even as she was borne to the gallows, she continued to weave the sweaters. When she finally reached the scaffold, she saw her brothers, having heard of her misfortune, winging down from the sky. She threw the six completed tunics onto her first six brothers who immediately transformed into humans.”)_

\--

They arrived at her chambers, silent. He opened the door for her, and she went in, sat heavily on the edge of her bed. He stayed in the doorway.

“I will order you some tea,” he said.

“Tyrion.”

_(“Honey, let me see you,” is what she means.)_

He turned.

She started: “I—”

“I know.”

_(She thinks of Talisa’s arms, the sureness of them.)_

Covered her face with her hands, “It will look odd if you do it. I’ll do it.”

He was beside her, hands at her knees, did not even hear him, see him cross the room, “Sansa, let me help you.”

_(She is going to cry. And once she does, she won’t be able to stop._

_She is out of control, losing, losing, losing control. Everything is such a_ mess _; she has made their House such a mess._

_Father would be so disappointed in her. He would be_ let down.)

“Please, please, please, just, I love you, but just go, I’ll do it, if they find you, I can’t—”

_(She is a bad, bad, bad, bad woman.)_

Soothing, “Alright. Don’t cry, love. It will be alright, Sansa, I’ll go.” 

And then he was gone.

**\--**

_(“But the seventh, the last brother to arrive, she had not time to finish his, the left sleeve remained undone. But in her panic, she threw it on him as well. And though, he transformed into a human, on his left side, he remained a swan.”)_

**\--**

_(Petyr stays with her. But her bed stays cold._

_But then, he suddenly gets up, disappears._

_Her bed is warm._

_It was Arya._

_In the dark, they find each other, Arya pressed to her back. She holds the hand that comes about her waist, curl their fingers together, brushes her thumb against the calluses on the tips of Arya’s fingers._

_And it is then she begins to weep.)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know it's seriuz bizness when there's a retelling in a chapter. the fairytale is based on hans christian andersen's "the wild swans"--though there's 17 billion versions of this story. 
> 
> chapter title is from an act i line from hermes. 
> 
> hope all is well! thank you for the lovely comments/kudos!


	10. it's a sad song, a sad tale, a tragedy (here's the thing to sing it again, as if it will turn out different this time)

_(It is his one request when he becomes Hand. He orders the twins’ bodies, in shallow graves outside the city wall, unearthed._

_He goes to Brienne and tells her that she was the greatest thing that ever happened to his brother, that he had never seen Jaime happier, that she was his sun and his stars, that he must have been thinking of her and only her in the end, he is so grateful to her for his brother’s happiness, because that is what you_ say _to someone submerged in so much pain._

_Then he orders the twins burned together.)_

_\--_

She awoke suddenly, with a great gasp as if she was drowning. Turned suddenly at the warmth banded about her waist.

“It’s just me,” Arya said.

Sansa relaxed slightly, tried to speak, found her mouth dry, croaked, “Is it late?”

“No,” Arya said, “They haven’t even come to stoke the fires yet.”

Sansa rolled to her back, “I should get up—”

“You were tired.”

“I haven’t been sleeping well,” Sansa said, “for the past few days.”

Arya snorted, “For the past few _years._ ”

Sansa turned her head, “Shouldn’t you be training?”

“I was tired, too,” Arya shrugged.

Sansa ground the heels of her hands into her eyes, tried to brush away the grit, “This is a mess.”

Arya pinched her lips in thought, “He should have told him. Was craven not to.”

Sansa did not answer her, took her hand instead.

Arya squeezed her fingers tightly, “It’s no one’s fault but Jon’s.”

Sansa covered her face with her other hand. Breathed deep.

Sansa said finally, “When I was in King’s Landing and in the Vale, I would think of all the things I wanted to say to Mother and Father and Robb and you and—and when I found you and Jon and Bran, I would think about it all the time, exactly what happened, that they were somehow out there, too. All the things I wanted to say to them. I would have these _conversations_ in my mind, like they were there, play them out again and again. It sounds so—so _idiotic_ now.”

Arya watched her, cool and careful.

“And then they did come back, a miracle. And all those things. All those things I thought about for years—some I couldn’t remember or didn’t matter anymore. But others, others, I don’t _know._ I just couldn’t—they hadn’t—”

“Earned them.”

Sansa met her sister’s eyes, grey like hers, like their brothers, like their father, affirmed, “They hadn’t earned them.”

\--

_(Varys advises that a pyre in a city just threatened by dragons would be unwise and so—_

_He takes men with him, their bodies in a cart behind him covered in cloth to conceal their purpose. They ride out along the coast; reach a secluded bay by the time the moon is high, and the sky is black. There is lumber already there, waiting. His men get to work, constructing a pyre._

_He watches, astride his horse.)_

\--

Tyrion awoke sore, legs aching. He had jogged across the castle to Talisa’s chambers, up too many stairs, down too many hallways.

_(“Please, please, please, just, I love you, but just go, I’ll do it, if they find you, I can’t—”_

_He had hoped to never see a woman pleading in front of him again. Not for safety. Not from him.)_

He did not rise for some time—

_(Robb had called her a_ whore _. All his women, he thinks wryly.)_

\--waited until the servant lit the hearth, asked for his meal in his chamber, lay back, waiting for it to arrive—

_(What he remembers most is Sansa screaming—a queen nearly on her knees—)_

\--when the meal comes, hot porridge and honey and a bowl of strawberries, he finds he cannot eat, pushes it away and goes to her brother’s chambers.

\--

_(Fire is loud is what he learns. Sigh of ignition. Cracking, shifting logs. But then—after the red flames have spread—it roars.)_

\--

They fell back asleep in the end. Were awoken by the rush of opening bed curtains—

“Sansa, it’s almost—oh,” Catelyn stopped a moment, “Hello, girls.”

Late morning light, bright white, streamed through the chambers. Sansa blinked blearily, blinded, “Good morning, Mother.”

“You are still abed—they are almost finished serving the morning meal.”

“They will be finished serving the morning meal when the queen has eaten it,” Sansa grumbled.

Arya laughed into her pillow.

“Caspar was wondering where you were,” her mother continued, “Loudly.”

_(She can feel the ghost of his hands on her knees,_ Let me _—_ that _is a coil of pain that she cannot even_ begin _to unwind this morning.)_

Sansa ignored her, “Where is my brother?”

“Robb?”

She shook her head, “No, the King.”

\--

_(He looks at the two husks in the cart—faces and bodies still grotesque mirrors, even drained of throbbing blood—and he sees._

_They had created something together. They had held a coal between their fingers and blown until life had sprung forth. And Myrcella and Tommen had been_ beautiful _to behold._

_They—the men, he means—he will not remember their faces or their names tomorrow day—trundle the twins’ bodies up to the pyre and he watches them be lifted on planks of wood into the flames—they look small and gray in the starlight, waxy like dolls._

_Mortal, he will find the word later at the bottom of a wine cup, they looked human.)_

\--

“There is a singular benefit to no longer bedding your sister,” Tyrion said casually, stuffing his pipe, “And that is that I can smoke with impunity.”

Talisa had been the one to answer when he knocked on their chamber door. Had let him in, wordless. Sat on the end of the bed while she watched Tyrion make himself comfortable in the chair by the hearth. Their room was dark, the dark red curtains pulled almost entirely over the windows, letting in nothing in but a single stroke of white light, scarred Robb’s face when he looked up to see who dared to visit. Someone had clearly made an effort with candles and the hearth, of course, but it still left the room more full of shadows than anything else.

Robb was up, dressed, his face though—

_(He looks old.)_

His knuckles were purpled with bruises, could mistake them for quill ink if one did not know better, “What do you want, Lannister?”

Tyrion gestured, “Sit.”

Robb looked to Talisa. She nodded almost imperceptibly.

He sat.

“Sleep well?” Tyrion lit his pipe, inhaled with savor.

Robb leaned forward, “Why are you here, Imp?”

Tyrion blew out a cloud of smoke, “I’ve told you—bastards, broken things, all that.”

Robb’s gaze hardened. Tyrion lolled his head to look at Talisa, “Not much company in the morning, is he?”

Robb spat, “And what is your interest—”

“Oh,” Tyrion said, “I think you know precisely where my interest lies, my prince,” he said, then bitter, “I told you she could not bear much more heartbreak.”

“So, you come here on my sister’s command?”

Tyrion shook his head, smirked a little, “I am not your sister’s _to_ command.”

“We’re not friends,” Robb said, growled more like.

“Well, now, that _is_ hurtful,” he looked to Talisa again, “Is he always like this? No wonder he lost—”

She spoke, “Lord Tyrion—don’t—”

Tyrion was impatient though, suddenly aware of the emptiness in his belly, should have eaten before he came after all, “I had a brother, too, as I am sure you are aware.”

“Sister-fucker.”

_(Stark’s mouths are not shaped for vulgarity.)_

Tyrion tapped the stem of the pipe against his teeth, “The very same,” he settled back into his chair, spread himself against it, feet propped on Talisa’s little sewing table—

_(“You take up so much_ space, _” Sansa had told him once, irritably, “Like you think you own_ everything _.”)_

“I was married before Sansa. When I was a boy. Beautiful girl, common, crofter’s daughter—”

_(“You could look for her,” Sansa says against his hair._

I don’t need your fucking permission; _is what he had wanted to say. Didn’t, in the end.)_

“—I won’t bore you with the details. Needless to say, my father did not approve, and he broke off the marriage—”

_(The clink of coins. Glint of silver. Her breath—)_

“—and my brother told me not to mourn it, that she was a whore that he had hired for me. Kind of him, I know,” he plucked a bit of lint from his trousers, “And that is what I believed without question for twenty years,” he sucked his pipe casually, like he was discussing the weather, “Until my brother was being imprisoned and about to be executed by the Dragon Queen and it was then, and _only_ then, that he told me the truth. That it was a love match the entire time. That he had _lied_.”

Robb was still as a boulder. Tyrion could see Talisa in the periphery of his vision, hand over her mouth.

“Twenty years. That’s how long I thought my wife, my lovely, sweet, good wife, tricked me,” Tyrion could tell that the pipe was trembling in his grip, set it down to make it stop, “Then Jaime had the good sense and the audacity to _die_ before I could ever—well, twenty years. Could you imagine watching your brother, any of them, walk around, heart-broken, for twenty years and not tell them the truth,” he eyed Robb, “Well, perhaps, you can actually.”

Robb did not say a thing. Talisa, “Tyrion—”

“My sister I never trusted. But Jaime—twenty years he did not tell me. And I love—loved—my brother more than I loved any person in this entire world. I worshipped him—his beauty and his goodness and his love of me—”

_(He will not weep. He will not. He will not. He will not. He will not weep in front of any man, especially not—all the Gods help him—a Stark.)_

“—but I hated him, then.”

He had him now, some shift in the eyes, Tyrion could tell, he had snagged him.

“I hated him and raged against him and cursed his name.”

Robb sneered, “And yet you raised his child.”

“And yet I raise his child,” he agreed, “And yet I gave him a funeral and my sister one, too,” he paused, considered, “I killed my father, you see, executed him, really. I was in prison and Jaime had freed me and I betrayed him to murder our maker. And yet when I saw Jaime again, years later, at Winterfell, he embraced me. Right on the steps—”

_(It had been near the stables, with the horses for witnesses, in truth—but he always has had a weakness for poetic symmetry.)_

“—in front of the court. Forgiveness.”

He glanced for a final time at Talisa, eyebrows raised, back to Robb where he sat, heavy in his chair, “Well, I must admit I missed breakfast. And I cannot go into meetings with an empty stomach—it makes me terribly fond of trade sanctions and terribly unpopular with my Master of Coin. Good day, Prince, Princess.”

\--

_(It is a terribly familiar feeling, he thinks as he watches them burn, it is terribly familiar: watching them go, together, always together, going where he is not allowed to follow. Left behind.)_

\--

Talisa walked him to the door and, to his surprise, stepped outside with him, said, after the door closed, “I should thank you, Tyrion.”

“My lady—”

“I should have last night—”

“You were quite occupied,” he said, “It is no matter, truly.”

“I think he tries to hide his pa—”

“Talisa,” he said, “I did not come for him. I am not a maester here to heal your house.”

Talisa inclined her head, “Still, it was kind.”

_(“You’re always kind to me,” Sansa on his chest, Sansa in his lap, Sansa reaching for his hand—_

_You don’t know me at all.)_

\--

_(He traces the sparks that rise from the pyre. They lift and drift on the breeze. They all wink away eventually but some ascend high before they do—he follows them, a spray, that look like a new constellation against the black sky before they sputter and die._

_He does not know what they do with the rest of the remains. Rides away as they begin to shovel the ashes.)_

\--

Bran sat in the godswood where she had found him four days before.

“I have not seen much of you, Sansa,” Bran greeted, eyes closed. He looked pale, wan, even with the forest lights playing off his face.

“You know why.”

“I did as you asked, sister, it was his choice in the end,” Bran said, “As you wanted it to be.” He paused, lips quirked, “If it’s any comfort, I thought you were kind to offer the oil.”

Pinched mouth, “Do you often spy on me?”

“I am concerned for your happiness, Sansa. And his.”

“I am not here to speak of Lord Tyrion.”

“No—” his eyes opened, “Our brothers. You are here to discuss our brothers.”

“And the mess they will make of our kingdoms if we let it fester,” she knelt, “We are the heads of our House now, it is our responsibility.”

_(It’s a rebuke, they both hear it: You’ve let me deal with this alone, Bran, you’ve been out here when you should have been in there.)_

“Yes,” he sighed, “I suppose you are right. Though I must warn you, sister, if you are expecting a clever plan then you will be disappointed.”

She had sat beside him in the grass, skirts spread, “We must think of something, though,” she said, “We must think of some way to—to _fix_ this.”

_(I know you’re tired, she says it in the brush of her hand on his knee, me too.)_

“Jon and Robb must speak, we can arrange it, but the rest relies on them—”

Muttered, “Not promising.”

“You don’t give them enough credit perhaps,” Bran said, “Then there is the matter of our lady mother.”

“Is there a way to avoid her hurt in this?”

Bran shook his head, “No—there are few certainties in this world, but this is one. It was written at the Tower of Joy.”

She nodded, “Then we will have to bear it for them.”

“Yes,” her brother said, “Yes, we will.”

\--

_(He rode back, clattering up to the Red Keep’s steps just as dawn was spreading across the city. Varys is waiting._

_“It was always going to be this way, Daenerys or no,” Varys tells him, hand on his shoulder, “It was what they wanted.”_

_It is cold comfort, but it is comfort, nonetheless. He touches Varys’ hand, white and tuck with powder and perfume, “Thank you.”_

_He goes to his wife’s chambers.)_

\--

She wheeled Bran back to the Great Hall.

“Does the Iron Bank know about last night?” she asked.

“They will know something is amiss—no one came to the hall this morning.”

She sighed, “Mother said that Caspar was wondering where I was.”

“He’s a very earnest young man.”

She stroked his hair a little, “He’s your age, Brandon.” 

“I pity him,” Bran said, “He’s not a bad man.”

Sansa sighed, “I know. I pity him, too.”

\--

_(She had arrived the day before the pathetic cremation. She had gone to Jon first. It was only right._

_But then found him, dry-throated and listless, in the Hand’s chambers—_

_“It was good of you to come,” he rasps. She sits across from him. Takes his hand and kisses it._

_Oh, but he is weak for poetic symmetry._

_“I am so sorry about your brother,” she says. Kindred eyes._

_It is a sun-flare: I am in love with you, Sansa._

_It’s a bad time to realize it, feels wrong, disjointed. And there is nothing good about it, nothing tender, nothing sweet. He can see the rest of his life, wanting her, watching her. Strapped to another rock, another eagle swooping to rip out his heart again and again._

_So he says, “He was a traitor and a liar. A sister-fucker.”_

_But she does not let him deter her, “He was your brother.”_

_“You hated her—Cersei.”_

_Patiently, “And you loved her—”_

_He will not cry but his voice is still choked, “I wished her dead, I wished for her joy to turn to ashes and—”_

_“I don’t think,” she says it, carefully, slowly, plucks her words like lyre strings, “that means you should not mourn her, too.”)_

\--

The wheelchair caught on a loose stone and she had to push and grunt to get it free.

“Go around the left side,” Bran said, “It’s not as steep there.”

She did his bidding and took a slight turn to a broad, sandy path that led around the back of the castle. It was not as steep, but the wheels spun uselessly in the sand, made her strain against it.

“I need to rest a while,” she said finally, rolled them to the edge of the path, under the broad branches of an elm tree. She ensured that he was secure and then settled on the grass beside him, leaned up against the rough bark of the tree and closed her eyes.

“And how are you, brother?” she asked, “You speak very little in meetings.”

“The benefit to having a Hand, dear sister,” he yawned a little, “Besides, it ruins the illusion when I speak.”

“At least you have some use for him,” she said, “My Hand, I fear, still needs some polishing.”

“Robb is not your Hand.”

“Well, he signs his letters that way—”

“He is your placeholder,” Bran said.

She sighed, “You are right, I suppose.”

“He shows promise.” 

“It’s not his mind that I am concerned about, he’s capable enough—it’s just—with Tyrion, you have complete loyalty and then also, that _willingness_ to—”

“To play the game.”

“Yes,” she huffed a little, “Robb does not have that.”

“Neither did we.”

She brushed at his pantleg, smoothed it, “The truth is that he should have been king and I his Hand, but—here we are,” she said, “I confess that I envy you your Small Council.”

Bran looked to the sky, “Well, my Hand would likely say it should have been Jon who was King and I the one beyond the Wall. If it’s any comfort,” then, “I envy you your subjects. What I wouldn’t do for a month without plotting from the Iron Islands or from Dorne.” 

She smiled a little, “Was the Prince terribly sad at my refusal?”

Bran smirked, “Not so much that he will not try again.”

“And so, it goes on,” she stared up, blinking at the sun through its web of branches.

Bran said gently, “We should go in.”

She looked at him, “Of course, my king.”

\--

_(He goes to his wife’s chambers. And she is waiting for him. It is early but he has a flagon of wine in hand._

_He drinks._

_She moves the cup from his hand._

_He spews hatred and mean things._

_She sits, serene, sews._

_He orders more wine._

_She sends the maid away._

_He will fall asleep there, right there on her settee. And will wake, for the second time, with his wife’s cloak tucked under his head.)_

\--

They caught sight of Jon in the yard.

“Go,” Bran said, “You go to him.”

She kissed Bran’s cheek, “You should join us.”

“No, no,” he said, “I am tired, Sansa. Besides, Brienne is here.”

Sure enough, across the yard, Brienne came into view. She saw them. Crossed, “Your Grace, would you like me to take you inside?”

Bran smiled, “Yes, Brienne. I have much I need to discuss with you.”

“Thank you, Ser Brienne,” Sansa said, “I must see my brother now.”

She made her way across the yard, shoes sucking and sticking in the mud, to where Jon was waiting.

\--

_(It is Sansa who tells him that Brienne is with child. It sends him spinning. “How dare he?” he says it again and again and again, “How dare he?”_

_He goes to Brienne’s the next day—_

_“I will give him the Lannister name,” he says, “He will be provided for—”_

_“I don’t want your help, Lord Tyrion.”_

_That is something he had never considered, he feels something slipping from him, he stutters, “Ser Brienne—”_

_“This child will have enough trouble without your name,” she says, calmly, principled, “I have no intention of burdening them—”_

_He says something cruel back, ice-tipped, something about bastards, something about unwed mothers._

_She stays still. It’s that stillness, that dignity, he will think later, that had made her a knight. When he is done, she will say, quietly, “I am this child’s mother, Lord Tyrion. That is a greater obligation than one I could bear to any king or queen, let alone a name. No thank you.”_

You would have broken Jaime’s heart, _he spits,_ He wanted nothing more than for his children to bear our name.

_“Good night, my lord,” Brienne tells him, “You’re drunk.”_

_He leaves. Slumps back to his chamber. Sansa is there—why the fuck is she there?—he expects that she knows, that what she will say will be rebuke and he is ready, ready to fight her. But she extends her hand to him and says, “Rest now. Just a moment, rest now.”_

_It feels like she’s taking him on her back, bearing him through some kind of natural disaster, postbellum hurricane. She is the eye._

_“Why are you doing this?” he will ask her later. It will not be grateful; it will be accusatory._

_“We are friends,” she will say lightly, “Or had you forgotten that?”)_

\--

They ended up in the council chamber. It was empty.

_(This is how it always is with them, since they were reunited. Her, him, empty chambers.)_

“How do you feel?” she asked. His knuckles were bruised. Lip swollen.

“I don’t need your pity, Sansa.”

She rapped her knuckles against the table, “Trust me, I have little pity for you, Jon. You should have told him.” She gentled, “I understand why you did not.”

“He was so glad that nothing had changed,” Jon said thickly, “I was glad to see him. Unbearably so. I just—and then the election—” Jon scrubbed his face, “I fucked my aunt, Sansa. And then I knew who she was and I kept fucking her. And then I killed her.”

“I know, Jon,” she said. She put her palm against his cheek. Felt rough with stubble.

“I was different before—” he said, “Before the war.”

_(Life rushing through blue tunnels, a cleaving—she knows that story even without Sam telling her.)_

_(This is a thing they do not speak of. To be sure, she had ripped her husband’s throat out, let his flesh be consumed. But he had given her the kennel key.)_

“We’ll be alright,” she said.

Jon nodded tightly, “I will speak to him—”

“Sooner, Jon,” she said, touched his cheek again, “Sooner.”

Nodded. Felt it more than saw it, in the jostle of her hand.

“And then there’s Mother,” she said.

_(She pushes and pushes and pushes—)_

\--

_(When Galladon is three, he asks about his papa. And Tyrion tells him a fantastical story of a man who fought dragons and was half-made of gold, who had been turned from fire-sparks into the stars himself—_

You see that one, there? _He asked the boy,_ Look, that’s your papa.

_“You do him a disservice,” Brienne will tell him, when Gal repeats the story, “He should know the truth.”_

_“Sister-fucking at three?” he says lightly, then says, like it’s not a wound, “Or do you mean what’s in the Kingsguard book?”)_

\--

Jon was shouting now, “It is not my obligation to tell her a damned thing, Sansa!”

_(She has never feared Jon. Never in her entire life. Is perhaps the only man in the entire world that has never made her afraid. It makes her forget, how loud he can be, how much—)_

“Jon,” she said, low, like one would do to calm a horse, “Jon.”

“No, Sansa, that is so unfair,” pulled his arm away from her, “No one will need to know—”

“How foolish must you be, Jon,” she finally snapped, “As if she will not find out one day, from a servant or from someone—Jon, it is not a secret anymore—”

“It’s not a secret because you keep telling people—”

“I have—”

“Have you ever, ever thought about what it meant that it was secret,” he was close to her, felt his spittle, “It meant that Father _lied._ To all of us. It meant that everything that we had never known, our whole life, was a _lie._ That whatever understanding he came to with your mother was false—”

He was advancing on her, like his anger had some sort of true force behind it—

“Jon, please,” she said quietly, “Jon, you’re—”

“—you have no concept, Sansa, of what that will mean for her. Of what that means that she will think of _me._ ” His finger was raised, stiff and pointed at _her—_

“Jon,” another voice. Tyrion. He stood in the doorway, sheaf of papers in hand, “Jon, let her be.”

It broke something. Jon lowered his hand to hang limply at his side. He seemed disoriented for a moment, then, quietly, “Sansa, I am sorry, I forgot—”

“It is no matter, Jon,” she said.

_(Who says that she cannot lie?)_

“I will go,” Jon said breathing hard, “I will see you later.”

\--

_(“You do him a disservice,” Brienne will say again, ignoring whatever part of her he has nicked, “Both of them—what boy could live up to a man who lives in the stars?” Shakes her head, “How could you know his beauty without knowing his ugliness?”_

_And that’s how he knows that Brienne has always been the hero of this tale.)_

\--

She sank into the nearest chair as soon as Jon closed to the door behind him. Tyrion crossed. Left his papers on the meeting table. There was little enough energy to resist the way he kissed her brow, tilted her chin. There was little enough energy to think about the way her hands go to his shoulders.

She had not wept for years but there was some hysteria in her throat, “I am just—I am trying to help—I am trying—"

“Sansa,” he whispered against her temple, “Sweetheart.”

“Tyrion,” she said, began to repeat what she had said the night before, “I can’t—”

“Just a moment, one moment,” he said, “One moment. Rest for one moment.”

_(He’s like a storm. The way he leaves debris behind him—what does it say about her that she finds her rest in a man like him?)_

“What do you want, Sansa?” he spoke it into her hair.

She shook her head, “I can’t. We need to stop—”

_(Hearing it, telling him—_

_When she kissed him the first time, she found she could not stop. Pressing kiss after kiss into his mouth, every time she pulled back, leaning back in. Just one more, she thought, just one more and another after that._

_A compulsion, a madness, she thought, honey, this is a madness. Kissed him again._

_\--it’s like that.)_

“One moment.”

_(It is always like this. Always denying him. But it’s only when he comes to her with an offer she does not know how to refuse—only ever for one night, for three days—)_

So she put her head on his shoulder. Hand passed over her hair. Arm about her shoulder. Steady breath.

_(She rested.)_

_(She is always, always, always the one to ruin it—)_

\--

_(Sansa will tell him things about her childhood. This is later, when they are in love—they will walk the halls of Winterfell in between meetings and she will say, little incidental things—_

That’s where Robb learned to ride a horse.

That’s where Theon broke his finger.

That’s where—

_She will not come to the Rock. But he tells her, low in the lamplight, finally, feels something like bravery, “Jaime used to tell this jape about—”_

_It’s not a particularly good joke, but Jaime had loved it and it will make her laugh. She will gather it up. Hold his love for her, for Jaime, close to her breast.)_

\--

Her hands went to his collar, running her fingers under it, “Last night, if you had stayed—”

_(She pushes and pushes and pushes—)_

“Tell me,” she murmured.

_(He’s a liar, the way he leans in, the kiss he leaves on her jaw, the hand he moves down her throat.)_

_(He can see the darkness, the little bursting in her eyes—I would lay you back, you know how you like it—)_

Pulled back, made her chase him, “I would have ordered you tea.”

She spoke again, “I will not come to you tonight. I am going to be with Robb tonight.”

_(Kisses her cheek. Like her mouth is a boundary that means a damned thing—like the way he knows the shape of her wrist, the way he is tracing the web of veins there_ right now _, isn’t the real violation—)_

“I promised Jon a drink,” he said. Dropped her wrist.

“This isn’t Cersei, or dragons, or—”

_(Her brothers.)_

“Right,” he said, “That’s right.”

_(Toes. Precipice. He knows this game—)_

Stepped back, “I have a question about the tax on whale oil.”

_(It’s a relief. This she, they, know how to do. Makes everything recede. This is easy.)_

She nodded. Hands against her cheek, checked their heat, “Yes, I think we should calculate it by barrel rather than weight—”

“And standardize the barrel measurements.”

“I would have to talk to Manderly—”

_(_ See, _she tells him in her brow, smiles encouragingly,_ we’re doing it. _)_

\--

_(He will leave after awhile when they have gone through the calculations again. Grip her fingers before he does—_

_A place to go, a thing to hold.)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know it's been awhile!!! I love this fic so much but I have struggled with it a lot since its beginning so I needed a bit of a break from it (and wrote a Sanrion Cold War AU and began to draft a million other GoT fics in the process) but this series is my baby and I am excited to be back with it! And ready to go! 
> 
> Let me know if you're still here!! <3 <3 <3


	11. i've got the wind right here in a jar (you want the moon? she's right here waiting in my pay-per-view)

_(Here is how Petyr taught her history:_

_He drew a great circle on a piece of parchment and wrote her name—her real name—in the center. Then he drew several other circles, wrote in the midst of them the names of Lannisters and Tyrells and all other sorts. Then he joined them all with sweeping arcs until the page looked like a pane of splintered glass, with each line said, “Enemy to you or friend?” then she would have to recount the history between them._

_“Do you know why they call Varys the Spider?”_

_She shook her head. And he smiled, “Because he understands one fundamental fact about Westeros: we are all connected in a great web. You are connected to me and I am connected to that serving girl who lights the fires in the morning, and she is connected to the tradesman who bring us our goods. These,” he tapped the tip of his pen on the page on the thick line between her and Cersei, “These are strings that bind us all to each other. You can knot the strings to draw each other together or give them slack but you can never sever them. You can never tug on any of them without then disturbing all the others.”)_

_\--_

_(She would take her lessons in the Vale in Petyr’s solar. The lessons were mirror-like—she could trace the way they reflected what her septa had tutored her in. Arithmetic for account books, geography for war, dancing for seduction. Sansa had never thought herself as particularly clever—_

_“Maybe you just needed,” Petyr would always lean in at this point, breath minty and damp on her neck, “some practical application,” kiss at her temple, “to drive the lesson home.”)_

\--

She and Tyrion spoke for some time about whale oil and then, of course—

“We only have two days left with the Iron Bank,” he said.

_(Gods, that feels so tiring, too—)_

“Yes,” she shuffled her papers, “I will meet with Caspar today.”

“And you will refuse him? In the end?” he said, kept his eyes to the paper.

“Yes, I—”

_(I’m sorry, I just—it was fear that bested me yesterday. And I thought that maybe you could—)_

_(Maiden queen and wanton lover—they are braided too close together sometimes.)_

“No need, Your Grace, you need to keep all your options open.”

 _(Honey, this is a_ madness— _)_

“Bran will reveal that they have lost in Norvos today,” he said.

“In the meeting?” she made a little note.

“I believe that is his plan,” Tyrion said quietly, “I think four hundred thousand dragons is low.”

_(Four hundred thousand dragons—Gods, and he had reminded her of already-made plans—)_

“Low?” she said, “That is—”

“I think we need to start higher,” he said, “Seven hundred thousand.”

_(Seven—what is he—)_

She sighed, “Gods, Tyrion—”

“They can negotiate it down, but we have them where we want them,” he said, “Why not?”

 _(Wants to say:_ Would you like the list categorial or alphabetical?

_Knows that he has always said she is too soft on foreign negotiations—three years before, “I could have gotten the Lysene silk merchants to half that cost, darling—”_

_Had always rankled—)_

“Why _not_?” she said, “We can—”

“I’ll do it,” he said, “You keep Caspar the same. Four hundred thousand—”

 _(Oh,_ he’ll _do it—how kind of him, how generous—)_

“I think it’s big for a dowry—”

“He’s buying a _kingdom_ , Sansa,” Tyrion said, “And a new home.”

 _(She can see the sense in it, just doubts that Caspar sees it the same way—)_

“Alright,” she said, waving it all away, “Fine.”

“I think you are underestimating the depths of their purses.”

“I said ‘alright,’” she said. It was sharper than she had intended.

_(She is always polite, even her threats sound sweet—)_

He stopped what he was writing, looked up, “Your Grace—”

“I am sorry,” she said quickly, covering her face, “I shouldn’t have—”

_(She is so neat, all the time, but she has been spilling everywhere lately—)_

“Sansa—”

“I am just tired; I didn’t sleep well.”

_(Her head on his shoulder should have been enough. His voice in her ear should have been enough. Nothing is ever enough for her—she is greedy, like his sister was greedy, like his father was—)_

“Sansa, _look_ at me.”

She did.

“It is two more days,” he said, “Two days and the Iron Bank will be gone. And then—”

“And then what?” she said, “And then I will still have my brothers—and my _mother—_ ”

_(Fuck, she thinks, fuck.)_

Waved her hand again, “I just want to focus on the Bank. You are right. Two more days.”

Then his hand is on her arm and sliding _up_ —

Ice shock: “What are you doing?”

_(“Frigid, you are,” Petyr says in her ear, “Always have been.”)_

Tyrion dropped his arm, “I don’t know.”

“Tyrion—”

_(She’s a mean woman, a bad one. Sells her favors for coins, denies any man who dares to love her—)_

_(She could reach out, she could reach out and touch him, she could have him, here, in her bed right now—ask him to stay. He would do it if she asked, he would do anything for her if she told him she loved him enough times. For such a complicated beautiful man, he has always been so_ simple— _)_

 _(No, he wouldn’t. Already had told Bran no. He will always be the one leaving in the end, won’t he? No matter how easy it is to make his body a dwelling, he has always been so_ difficult— _)_

He swallowed and nodded, “Are we in agreement about the request increase?”

She took a breath and his forgiveness with it, “I still think that it is high.”

“I will bring it down to five-fifty—”

“That’s better,” she said, “It’s better, I will go for four with Caspar.”

He smiled, “Very well.”

“But if you manage, by some miracle, to bring in the full—this does not negate our deal—we will split it down the middle—”

“Of course, Your Grace,” he smiled fully now. He took her hand, gripped her fingers, hard, love, felt like love, “See you in the meeting, Your Grace.”

She nodded, “Yes.”

\--

_(The first four years of her reign were winter. Just trying to stay alive, counting every last germ of wheat. Scrabbling together enough rations to impress Tyrion when he comes for his annual visit, to pretend that everything is better than prosperous—even buried under thirty-foot drifts of snow, even with the glass gardens only half the size they should be this season—_

Thank the Gods for a mild winter _, Manderly said when it was over, and it makes her want to weep in fear.)_

\--

It was still morning. She had been right; the morning meal was still laid out in the hall and she ate quickly before going to find Caspar.

_(Petyr joins her as she eats. Sits beside her. Takes crumbs—bits of bread and orange pulp, runs his finger through the jam.)_

She found Caspar crossing the training yard, she smiled coyly, “I heard you were looking for me.”

“Well, Your Grace,” he said, “I _was_ promised a walk.”

_(Petyr strides beside her as they go, silent, turn down the path to the godswood.)_

She took the way that Bran had shown her, the one that curved behind the castle walls, close to the sea cliff’s edge. Black waves surged and seethed, sucked and exploded on the sharp rocks below. She had not noticed when she pushed Bran earlier, how thin the tree line was here and how far the drop looked from on high.

“Are you well, Sansa?”

“Oh, yes—”

“I heard that your brothers were fighting,” he said.

_(She looks at Petyr, “He knows.”_

_“Well, of course, he does, sweetling,” he said, “You should have expected it.”)_

“They are great men,” she said, “But they are still brothers.”

“My brother and I are at actual war,” Caspar laughed, a bitter sound, “Blood means little.”

_(“Don’t you dare,” Petyr says, “Don’t you dare—“)_

“Do you love him still?” she said, “Even when—”

“I—” Caspar stuttered, “I—Yes, I suppose.”

_(Oh, but she wants to sit with this man and tell him all the weight on her body—my House is splitting apart, she wants to tell him, you understand—)_

“If he surrendered, if you—”

 _(It sounds like she’s begging to her ears—_ tell me that the love stays _.)_

“I would welcome him back, yes,” Caspar said, seemed to shake himself, smile, “Sansa, we should be taking in the day.”

She ignored him, “What is your brother’s name?”

_(She knows it. Has a dozen letters from him in her desk at Winterfell. Wants to hear him say it, hear the shape of it on a loved one’s lips.)_

“Myles,” he said, “He’s the older of us—the trueborn—”

She smiled, “But you are the more the loyal to your uncle.”

He laughed nervously—

_(“Off script,” Petyr says, a little pleased, even as he warns, “So are you.”)_

“I am now in line for his fortune,” he said.

_(Oh, but she can see the opportunity here, hates herself, but feels Petyr’s hand on her back and she just—)_

“Do you love your uncle like you love your brother?” she asked, honey-sweet, leaned into him, “I would fear him if he was mine. The way he blusters about—”

“He’s not a bad man but—” he shrugged, “I am not the heir he wanted.”

 _(_ Men will tell you anything when they are happy. _She almost smiles, happiness doesn’t come from just a bed, sometimes it’s just an ear to listen and a hand to hold, a place to go.)_

She said quickly, “In a different country, you could make your own name.”

He grinned at her, “Is that a proposal, Your Grace?”

She looked to the ground, then to the sky, then to him, “My brother—my brother would need convincing,” she paused, “The North needs a leader—I need a partner who would want the North to succeed—”

He nodded eagerly—

_(Oh, but she knows that hunger, knows that wanting—_

_What kind of woman is she that she can take a man’s pain, feel it like her own, and then see the chance in it?)_

“He might be more amenable if you showed that you were willing to help,” she said, “You only have two days until you leave, I just—”

Caspar was listening, brow furrowed—

“Collateral,” he said, “Collateral is what he needs.”

“Yes,” took his face between her hands, “A gift of some kind.”

_(She looks over her shoulder and Petyr is smirking, “Beautiful, sweetling.”)_

_\--_

_(Spring spreads in the North slowly. When the crocuses begin push their way through the earth, that is when the first letter from Lys arrives.)_

_(The foreign interest in her court is unexpected—something she had never even considered, stupid girl—and she does not know what to do with the first letters from Lys and Myr and Volantis arrive.)_

_(The letters keep coming, thicker and faster, every month. Every man from every town, province, kingdom, continent, has caught word of the Ice Maiden, every man wants to make her melt—_

_She knows the way the whores dress in winter town.)_

_\--_

They walked back the way they came, came to the conference chambers together, arms entwined. Tyrion arrived at the conference chamber at the same time, bowed low to let them enter and she reached briefly behind Caspar’s back, feigned that there was some dust on his coat. Instead, she splayed her fingers.

_Four._

When she looked back, Tyrion was looking at the ground, but he was smiling.

\--

_(One night, Jeyne comes to her chamber and tells her that the Myrish ambassador is looking to visit, looking to make friends in this new kingdom they have made.)_

_(She thanks her. Paces her room. The ambassador would not be Tyrion. Wouldn’t love her like Bran does. She lights a candle, takes out a sheet of parchment and draws her own great circles, her own sweeping arcs and finds the world is a web, too.)_

\--

Robb looked well, all things considered, even with the bruises on his knuckles. She entered with Caspar, Tyrion tailing. But Robb crossed the room, broke from his conversation with Davos.

Kissed her cheek.

“Come on, Sans,” he said, low, “Come and sit by me.”

_(There is more relief than she should feel in his forgiveness, not when their house is cleaved the way it is. At least it is not her fault alone.)_

_(“Good picture, too” Petyr says, too, as he sits on the arm of her chair, “Bloodied brother protecting his sweet sister. Will play well for Caspar, don’t you think?”_

_She hates him.)_

\--

Robb was saying, “And there is the considerable interest rates that you have proposed, Lord Janos, I just, in good conscience—”

_(Petyr is leaning over the back of her chair while she watches, “It’s not like he’s bad, he’s just—”_

_“He’s not guileless,” she says back, “He’s just too—”_

_Petyr wags his head like he was deciding between wines, “Honest?”_

_“Earnest, I would say,” she said, “He wants it too much.”)_

“We will only offer them to the landed—”

Robb leaned forward, finger striking the table, “To the—”

_(It is a lightning crack, the way it happens—startles all of them when it starts—)_

Bran’s eyes rolled back with a dreadful gasp, a guttural choking. Rocked back against the chair. Veins stretched, bulging purple. Throat strained, face flushed. Eyes melted to milk.

_(She had been stunned to stillness the first time she had seen it.)_

Robb leapt from his chair, knocked over an ink pot, fell to his knees beside his brother, “Bran, Bran!” Tried to shake him, “Brandon!”

She watched Robb’s ink, purple, blue and black, spread across the table, consumed whatever he had been writing.

Tyrion intoned solemnly, “It is best, my prince, for you to wait it out.”

She looked to Caspar’s face, panicked and pale, Janos and Bartholomew, both pitched forward, horror-struck.

Bronn picked a bit of apple skin from between his teeth.

“Bran!” Robb was yelling, hand clamped on his arm, “Someone summon Mother! Or Talisa!”

_(This is cruel, she realizes, this was cruel.)_

Bran’s eyes slid back to gray with a gasp. He was pale, fever-slick. He looked to her, calm. Then said, “I have seen it. Norvos has fallen, my lord.”

\--

_(It is a woman’s diplomacy. That is what Lady Flint calls it when they dine alone—_

_“No man,” her advisor says, flush with apple brandy, “could make a deal like you do.”_

_Women’s weapons, she thinks, turns panicked to Petyr’s ghost:_ Am I—

_He does not, for once in his damnation, answer.)_

_\--_

_(She keeps doing it—this woman’s diplomacy—tries to think of anyone but Cersei—_

_“The greatest weapon is between your legs.”_

_\--she tries not to measure the value of the things that create the arsenal she has made in her body.)_

\--

Chaos—that is what came next.

Bartholomew scurried away. Janos spluttered some excuse before leaving. Caspar came to her, bent down, “We just—This won’t—”

“No, Caspar, no. Just talk to Robb—I—” she looked to Robb, but he was focused on Bran, still sheened with sweat, “In a little while, it would be best—if—for your own safety, I would make the offer soon.”

He nodded, squeezed her hand—

_(Petyr has her other hand, “Prettily done.”)_

\--

_(Tyrion is perhaps not the first to notice the little tricks she is playing with her suitors—the extra deliveries of sugar and the sea routes she has secured. But he is the first to say something. Presumes he has some special right to say it._

_The Dornish prince likes furniture. Sends her an overly large settee—red and gold crushed velvet. Tyrion laughs when he sees it pushed up, out of place, at the end of her bed._

_“I_ love _it,” he says and she thinks, fondly, that he says it with some sincerity._

_They end with her stretched across its length and him cradling her head in his lap. She would be asleep if he did not keep trying to kiss her, bending down, tilting her chin up, making her giggle like a girl—_

_Then—_

_“You know the scheme with the Lysene ambassador?”_

_“I do not,” she says, face pressed against his side, closes her eyes. Too focused on his thumb on her forehead. Their days have been consumed by the Iron Bank conundrum. She needs to rest._

_“Yes, you do,” he says like it’s obvious, “What if you and I—”_

_“You and I—”_

_“What if we worked together.”_

_Eyes open, “Worked together?”_

_The whole point is that they_ don’t _work together—there is something deep and snow-limned in her that tells her that he is a southerner, a Lannister at that— She understands the logic in it, lack of coin is a continental issue, not unique to either of their kingdoms._

_Webs, she thinks tiredly, could not wage war together and not rebuild together._

_But his hands are on her. She is still for the first time in days, eye of the storm—and maybe Manderly’s whisperers have a point.)_

\--

Robb stayed holding Bran’s hand, murmuring, “Are you well, Bran? Do you need water? Let Talisa see you.”

He did not look well, never did, after a warging. Bran still looked to her, “Do you think it was enough time?”

She said, “I would go find Janos this evening.”

Bronn nodded, drummed his fingers on the table, “After supper.”

Robb had paused in his fussing, was staring at her, “What’s happening?”

She bit her lip, met Tyrion’s eyes. Tyrion turned to Bronn and Davos, “We should retire to discuss the offer.”

It was an agonizing exit. Chairs scraping. Papers rustling. Then she was alone with her brothers.

\--

_(“Can you just kiss me again?” she asks him finally. She is always losing to him. He doesn’t mind.)_

\--

She had not planned to face Robb, not like this, not until the coin was in her coffers and the ink on the whale oil agreement was dry.

_(The way she had freed the North, the way she had won an election against this very man—she slips on maidenhood like an old gown.)_

“With the fall of Norvos, the bank is likely to lose control of most of northern Essos—”

“I know that,” Robb snapped.

_(“Well, well,” Petyr says in her ear, “Young Wolf bites back.”)_

\--

Tyrion did not listen to her. Left Davos and Bronn in the corridor for Janos and Bartholomew’s chambers immediately.

The brothers were bent over a table spread with maps, murmuring to each other.

He rapped on their chamber door—

“So,” he said, “I suspect that you now have need of me, my lords.”

\--

Robb was drumming his fingers on the table.

She continued calmly, “They weren’t counting on losing. They had a powerful army, allies—”

“Then why did they?” Robb rose to his feet, leaned against the table.

“We’ve been sending the Bastard supplies. Steel and leather, mostly,” she said, “I gather that Bran has been doing the same—”

“We’ve been mining the dragonglass near Dragonstone,” Bran said, “Selling off the old parts from Cersei’s war machines.”

“We’ve been sending it on loan,” Sansa said, “So when the new Bank establishes a foothold in the North, directly in the path of our new trade routes, they will be indebted to the Westerosi kingdoms, required to repay us in either coin or favorable trade.”

Robb nodded, “Clever.”

_(She swallowed the swell of pride in her throat.)_

“But the Iron Bank, as you know,” she said carefully, “has been losing their influence since Daenerys left the continent. And with the power changes here, they have been looking to us—”

“Are you intending to marry Caspar?”

She looked to Bran, “I intend to never marry.”

“Never—” Robb shook his head, “If—”

“Men, I have found, will do much for the promise of an idea of kingdom, are willing to pay much—”

“How much?”

“Four hundred thousand dragons.”

Robb’s eyes were like coins, “Four—”

 _(She just about busts in glee._ See it now? _)_

“Well, technically, two,” Bran said cautiously, “Until our deal with them comes through—”

Robb said, “You’re selling them something, too—”

“Dragonglass, well—” Bran shrugged a little.

Robb glared, “That’s your defense—"

Bran lifted finger, “Dragonglass is not all the same. For every pound of dragonglass that makes good weaponry, there are three pounds that are no better than shale.”

“And how much of this are you willing to sell them?” he said.

Bran cocked his head towards Sansa. She said, “Five hundred thousand dragons worth.”

\--

“My offer is nine hundred thousand,” Tyrion said.

_(She just might kill him if she finds out.)_

“My lord, that is much too high,” Bartholomew said. It had been this brother who had resisted Janos’ invitation to sit down, who had frowned when his brother had poured out a glass of wine. Tyrion did not touch it.

Tyrion raised his eyebrows in surprise, _He speaks._

“For two tons of raw material?” Tyrion said, “A material used to kill the dead? That the legends of Old Valyria carried?”

“We have plenty of weaponry—”

“No, you don’t,” Tyrion said, “A siege sucks the blood from an army—men are captured with their armor and their weapons, swords grow dull. I doubt that any new metal or leather has been coming into the city for—how long?”

_(Too long, he knows.)_

\--

“Gods,” Robb scrubbed his face with his hand, “I hesitate to remind you the problems that come with a broken engagement.”

“There will be no engagement,” she said, “A gift.”

“Foreign entities don’t make gifts of four hundred thou—”

“I doubt that Caspar cares much traditional diplomacy if he thinks he will have a crown at the end of it all,” she said, “We’re planning on calling it an investment in the whale oil trade, have him on as a partner.”

“Two hundred thousand in the wha—”

Sansa shrugged, “Well, anything and everything could benefit the trade—the construction of new ships could be to hunt whales and ship the oil, the construction of more roads to the Wall could be to transport oil—”

“And if he is part—”

“He won’t be,” she said, “Because the agreement he will sign will contain a clause that unless he declares allegiance to the North within a year, he will no longer be entitled to the profits.”

“I believe,” Bran said, “that was Bronn’s idea.”

“I believe,” Sansa said, “that was based on old Northern law.”

“An _interpretation_ of Northern law,” Bran said.

Sansa waved her hand, “Regardless, Norvos will be lost and the north of Essos will be open to us with friendly partners. Bran gets dragonglass off his hands and we both get much-needed coin in our coffers.”

Robb tapped his fingers on the table, “And how—how long have you planning this?”

Sansa touched Bran’s arm, “A year? A little less?”

\--

“You have until tomorrow,” Tyrion said, “Then my offer closes.”

"And what about my nephew and the queen in the North?" Janos asked, "That is moments away from a marriage--"

"You really believe her brother will let her marry Lord Caspar?" Tyrion grinned, "You think her brother would let her--the crown may rest on her head but you and I both know who holds the strings." At Janos' face, smiled, "I have known the queen since she was a child. Trust me, she loves her brother more than anything in this world and he is no friend of yours. She will do what he wills." 

Bartholomew narrowed his eyes, “We’ve never seen this—”

Tyrion pulled Arya’s dagger from his belt again, “Here. For your inspection.”

\--

“More than six months?” Robb said, sighed.

“Yes,” she met his gaze—

_(Like an old gown, she thinks, I bow for no one, not anymore.)_

\--Robb sighed, “What do you need from me?”

 _(Defeat. She feels it thud in her core, like a cyvasse piece falling on the board._ No, _she thinks,_ you’re not king anymore. _)_

“Caspar will come to you with the gift. You will ask him to draw up a contract—”

“Which you have already written,” Robb sighed again.

“It’s in my chamber.”

“—and have him sign it before he leaves tomorrow morning.”

Bran said, “I would also suggest impressing upon him that the sooner he sends the gift, the sooner he can come North.”

“Of course,” Robb said—

_(She can hear it. The bitterness, the degradation.)_

“Thank you, brother,” she told him as he left. Meant it.

\--

“We’re not doing nine, then,” Janos said, “Five hundred.”

_(Oh, but this is better than he could have hoped.)_

“Eight and a half.”

“Six.”

“Eight and a quarter.”

“Seven,” Janos said, “Final offer.”

Tyrion grinned, “Deal.”

\--

Jon was not at dinner. She sat with Robb and Talisa, smiled at Caspar as she curled around her brother’s arm. 

Robb pressed into her ear, “He promised me four hundred thousand for the whale oil.”

She leaned against him as she salted her fish, “Did you get him to sign it?”

“With ease, Your Grace.”

She looked to her brother, “Thank you, Lord Hand.”

But he is already looking away.

\--

_(Of course, they do work together in the end. It is her who remembers the piles of dragonglass still sitting at Dragonstone, untouched. It is him who look through Caspar’s letters._

_“Do they make you jealous?” she asks him once. Sudden, red thing to say. Rubies._

_Regrets it the moment she says it. Wants to kiss away the stricken look on his face, wants to tell him that he’s a silly man, that he misheard her. But she meant it and so she lets it hang in the air, waits for him to—_

_“No,” he says it, unbearably quiet, “No, Sansa.”)_

_\--_

He went to her solar after dinner, passed through to her chamber. She sat at her vanity, pushing on pearls for her wrists and a diamond ring for her little finger.

Announced his entrance, “Your chambers are much larger than Bran’s,” circled by the windows, “Better view of the sea, too.”

_(There is no containing it—the triumph.)_

“I got the full four,” she said, without turning around.

He smirked, backed away from the ocean, “I got seven.”

_(Oh, that is—)_

She turned, “You lied.”

“I hope five hundred-fifty coins is apology enough, Your Grace,” he said.

“You are so irritating,” she said, faced her mirror again. She tried to hide her smile, fought against it.

He approached, “Am I, Your Grace?”

She watched him in the mirror until he was behind her. Came about to her front, said low, “You can be rather difficult yourself, Your Grace.”

She ignored him.

“You did well,” he said, “You would make a fine diplomat.”

Tart, “You would make a fine fish merchant.”

He grinned—

“Brilliant. You were brilliant.”

She told him, honestly, “ _You_ are brilliant.”

He laughed, “You should have seen his face—when I said nine—”

“Nine!” she was shaking her head in disapproval but there was heat, too, spreading in her cheeks like at the end of a long dance, “We won’t—I don’t want to—until the money arrives—”

_(She says it but she is giggling like a girl as she does.)_

“No, but—”

Her smiled widened, “We might just do it, my lord.”

“By the skin of our teeth, we just might, Your Grace,” he said.

“And how will you spend your money, Lord Hand?” she asked.

_(It’s so natural the way she reaches her hand out—there’s no seduction, no bed-promises, no hands up arms, edging breasts—not in the way he takes it, the way he steps towards her.)_

“First, whale oil. Then,” he swept his hand wide, “A dozen bridges. And an orphanage in the Reach and then—"

_(It’s so natural the way he kisses the back of her hand, like a lord gone courting.)_

“And you, Your Grace?” he asked, “What will you spend your new fortune on?”

_(She doesn’t, for once, even think when she stretches her arms to dangle, girlishly loose, over his shoulders.)_

“I am going to get my road to Barrowtown,” she said.

“Finally,” he said, “A lovely road it will be.”

“The loveliest road on the continent.”

_(She laughs loud and long as she says it. He’s looking at her—fireplaces and blankets and hot tea and— Then—)_

“I love you,” Tyrion said.

_(There’s no tragedy in it. Just a truth—the sky is blue, the grass is green, and I love you.)_

“Tyrion,” she said.

 _(There’s no longing in it. Just fondness. Because he is right_ here. _)_

It was her who reached her arms down to touch his back, but it was him who made it an embrace, moved his hands to her shoulders and her neck. 

_(Oh, but she dwells in this body of his.)_

He kissed her temple, her cheek—

_(I know how you like it, he had said, I would kiss your neck—_

_Love is a habit as much as it is anything else.)_

It was rare that he ever just kissed her, was not his way. Hands on her neck, thumbs tucked beneath her jaw, held her face steady.

Temple. Cheek. Jaw. Chin.

_(Give me one, she thinks, give me one, then another and another after that.)_

She smiled—

_(It’s so useless. Joy is just a fact—cannot fight it, cannot lose to it.)_

Her hands were in his hair, his hand stroked to her breast, and she was saying, “My love—” but his mouth was brushing close against hers and—

The door opened.

_(This is something that they have practiced a half-hundred times before. He steps back, she leans away, turns towards the table—looks like a painting the way they recompose, the way they put their hands in full view, the careful space the make between them.)_

It was Arya.

Eyebrows raised, gestured behind her, “I can—I mean—”

“No, no,” Sansa said, “No, it’s fine.”

“I’m off to see King Jon,” Tyrion said, “I will see you tomorrow, Your Grace.”

Head bowed, “Goodnight, Your Grace. Good night, Princess Arya.” 

And then he was gone.

\--

_(Later, in bed, she will ask again because she cannot help but ruin everything._

_He will loom over her, knees on either side of waist, kiss her chin, temple, jaw with intention, “What you want from me, Sansa?” Runs his hand down her throat, “Do you want me rage against you? Curse your name?” kisses her mouth. She’s very in love with him, she realizes._

_He continues, “I won’t do any thing of the sort. You know that, darling.”)_

_\--_

_(They do not fight about it. And maybe they should have, she will think, later, when he leaves.)_

\--

Arya had an apple in her pocket, shined it on her pantleg. “Do you want me to go?” she asked, “Call him back?”

_(Yes.)_

“No,” Sansa said quickly, unhooked her earrings, “He needs to speak with Jon.”

Arya leaned against the edge of her vanity, said, “What are you trying to prove?”

“What do you mean?” played stupid, never worked with Arya anymore.

Arya bit the apple, spoke through it, pointed to the door, “With him.”

“It’s not—”

“You’re breaking your own heart,” Arya said, “And his.”

“Gendry makes you happy, doesn’t he?” Had the sudden urge to wound, “Go with him, marry him.”

Arya shrugged, “Gendry is a good man—”

“Then,” Sansa spread her hand, “So is Tyrion—”

Arya looked at her skeptically, “Is he?”

“Yes,” Sansa said, “Of course—”

“Gendry is a good man but he leads a dull life,” Arya bit her apple, “But _Tyrion_ —”

“It was a dangerous idea to begin with,” Sansa said dismissively, “My crown was threatened—”

“By _Robb,_ ” Arya shook her head, “If you think Robb is the threat than you—”

“I don’t think it’s Robb that’s the threat,” Sansa said, “I think it’s the people who would support him, who see him as an alternative, they would look for any excuse—”

“ _Your_ subjects,” Arya said sharply, “I believe that is what you mean.”

 _(She really has very little patience for Arya’s opinions on the ethics of leadership—)_

Sansa let the words run over her like river water, unpinned her hair, “Have you seen Mother today?”

“She was with Talisa all day. Why?”

“Jon will not tell her,” Sansa said, “Bran is in agreement with us—”

“Have you spoken with Robb?” Arya said, pushed her thumb into a soft brown spot in the apple’s white flesh.

“We had much business today,” Sansa said, “He didn’t—” 

Arya shook her head, “What else did Bran say?”

“That he would involve himself more,” Sansa sighed, “It makes me tired.”

“Let’s go to bed, then,” Arya said, “I’ll stay with you.”

_(No. You won't. Your ships are readying in the harbor and this castle's hallways are stacked with your supplies--)_

Sansa heaved a breath, “Alright.”

\--

_(Webs, she says to her council, that is how she lays out her arguments. The continent is a web, cannot sever our tie to them, they are the closest thing to a friend—_

_They agree, despite their grumbling._

_Webs, she’ll remind them again and again, you cannot tug on one string without disturbing all the rest.)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, last update: I'm back!!!  
> Also me: doesn't update for nearly a month
> 
> If anybody reading here is from the southern US, please stay safe!! <3 <3


	12. we build the wall to keep us free (that's why we build the wall)

_(Their marriage is a pity._

_When he looks at her, all he sees in a friendless child._

_When she looks at her husband, all she sees is a starving child._

_She has no bread to give him.)_

_\--_

He searched for Jon—

_(He climbs stairs and crosses hallways, hips shot through with pain—_

_“I love you.”_

_What a fucking idi—_

_Fleabites demand to be itched, will scab over eventually.)_

\--and found him in the training yard, pummeling a dummy with a sword.

The yard was dark, the moon more cloud-covered than it had been the night before—had it only been the night before?—Jon had set up a lantern on one of the fenceposts but it was a poor light still and almost burned down.

“Looks like rain,” Tyrion said as he approached. Jon did not respond. “Do you only ever train?” Tyrion asked, leaned against the fence.

Jon ignored him, swung his sword, the dummy creaked and swung on its hook.

“You promised me a drink,” Tyrion said, “But I don’t really do that anymore. So. I suppose this is,” he cleared his throat, “also entertaining.” 

Another hit. The dummy spun.

Tyrion sighed, “You are _just_ like your brother—”

At that, Jon threw his sword down, skidded in the sand, stalked away, “He’s not my brother.”

_Hit,_ Tyrion thought.

Tyrion yawned and looked to the sky, sing song, “Oh, yes. He is.”

Jon picked his sword up, “Why are you here, Imp?”

_(He even_ sounds _like Robb—)_

“We’re friends, are we not?”

_(Seven years ago:_

_“Why are you still here?” In his memory, it sounds like a wail, a pathetic sound. In his memory, he can taste wine like vinegar, and he can see the way she wrinkles her nose when he draws too close._

_“We are friends,” she had said, “Or had you forgotten?”)_

“I feel like,” Tyrion continued, who blew out air, cold enough to make silvery clouds, wished for his pipe, for something to do with his hands, “I feel like every time I talk to any of you Starks, or you Targaryens for that matter, I just repeat myself.”

_(He looks like Sansa, the way he bites his lip—she does that, too, when she’s pretending not to listen—)_

He considered Jon, the shape of his shoulders, thought as always that this was the man who should have been king, “Wear it like armor, Aegon Targaryen.”

Jon let out a laugh, sharp, “I fucked my aunt, Lord Lannister. And I liked it.”

“She was a very beautiful woman,” Tyrion said.

“I doubt that will be a good enough excuse for Robb,” he said, “Besides, I’m Queenslayer and kinslayer both.”

“As am I,” Tyrion said slowly.

_(The look Jon gives him is devastating, like a knife wound—_

_Yes, but—Yes, but you’re a Lannister. Better things were expected of me.)_

Tyrion continued, “Those things are things you have done or were made to do, they aren’t _who_ you are.”

Jon frowned, seemed unconvinced.

“I should apologize to Sansa,” Jon said, he wiped his face on his sleeve, “She was right. I must speak to Lady Catelyn, too—”

“At least you’ll derive some pleasure from that,” Tyrion said.

Jon looked at him, “I’m not you.”

“No,” Tyrion said, flexed his fingers against the rough-hewn fence post, “No. No, you’re not.”

\--

_(Bran does not offer him the choice of being Hand until after Sansa leaves. It is assumed that he will take it, of course, he’s been staying in the chambers after all, been sitting in on all the meetings, had been the one to go to Jon and beg him to take the throne. It was him, too, who made that speech, decided Bran should be king when Jon turned his back from it all. They’re already calling him Kingmaker in the court._

_“I would make you Hand if you would let me,” Bran tells him._

_“What makes you think that I wouldn’t let you,” Tyrion says. They are seated across from each other. Bran just smiles._

_The new King is a boy of few words—like his father—but Tyrion has made a personal study of his face these past few weeks and finds that perhaps he is not so quiet after all._

_“Will you?” The King asks, “King’s Hand, Warden of the West?”_

_“What makes you think that the West will have me?”_

_Bran shrugs, “Because we have precious few options besides you, my lord.”_

_“Ah,” Tyrion says, of course he’s the last resort—_

_Bran takes a breath before he speaks next, says, “I need an answer, my lord.”_

_“Yes,” Tyrion says, because he has precious few options as well, “Yes.”_

_“I have some conditions,” Bran says._

_“Of course,” he assumes it is things to do with reporting, with council times, perhaps, his drinking, don’t shame the Crown with your whoring either—_

_“You will not find a savior in me, Lord Tyrion,” Bran says, not unkind, “If you find yourself in need of worship, go to the Sept.”_

_It insults him somewhat;_ I just don’t know _what_ you mean.

_“I will not allow it,” Bran goes on, sounding for the first time like a real King, sounds like his sister, in truth, “I forbid it.”_

_Some men are meant to lead, some men are meant to serve._

_Jon Snow would have been an easier man to follow, an easier King to make._

_“Yes,” he says, “Alright.”)_

\--

She woke alone. Had a foggy recollection of Arya, bordered in pale morning light, telling her that she was going to train, then murmuring that she was going to join her in a moment—

Bright daylight streamed through the windows. Late morning yellow.

The morning was a haze. She dressed in another white silk gown; her mother did her hair. She descended to see off the Iron Bankers—

_(Caspar kisses her cheek before she goes—he really is a sweet man—and it is so forward that she feels ice jolt go through her. She looks to the ground, flutters eyelashes up, tilt head—_

_“A little to the left,” Petyr instructs._

_\--when he turns away from her, instinct makes her look at Tyrion, but he is looking very intently at the sword strapped to Brienne’s hip, Robb she catches by chance. He is staring at her, hard.)_

\--and then they were gone, the bankers drifting, look like spiders crawling back down to the docks.

“Let us hope,” Bronn said, turning to face both councils, “that they don’t drown before we get our coin.”

Davos and Tyrion laughed. Lady Flint smiled.

Robb did not.

\--

_(She had never appointed a Hand. Manderly had lobbied for it but she had never seen the need for one._

_“It’s not traditional in the North,” she had explained at first. As if any of what they are doing now, in the creation of new houses, in that she is on the throne is_ traditional—

_Then, when those arguments got tired, it was a firm, “Do you have a complaint, my lord, about the efficiency of our government?”_

_She does not see the need for one. Especially does not see the need when she actually gets one._

_“It’s more work,” she had complained to Lady Flint one night, over hot mulled wine, after a long day. Lady Flint was going home to Widow’s Watch to prepare her home for the Iron Bank conference. All the councilors were going home, to see their wives and their children, Jeyne to see her new goodmother and to plan for her wedding._

_“It’s only more work because you edit all his correspondence,” Lady Flint said, laughing.)_

_\--_

She retired with Lady Flint for the afternoon to review the correspondence that had stacked up the past few days. They made good progress, took the afternoon meal in their chambers and Lady Flint was saying: “I will go and present these new contracts—these are the latest, yes, yes they are—these are the ones I will bring to Lord Davos to sign and _these,_ ” she held up a separate sheaf, “will go to Bran—”

“Take them to Bronn to confirm that is how he—”

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” she said, distracted.

Robb entered.

_(She can still the bruises staining his knuckles.)_

She looked to Lady Flint, “Thank you, we will continue later.”

Lady Flint nodded, curtsied, and then Sansa and Robb were alone.

She stood in greeting, “Thank you,” she began, “for your help yesterday—”

_(When they were children, he would laugh with her and play along when she wanted to practice greeting visiting lords for a feast. “What a little lady,” he would say, tug her braids._

_He has no time for her courtesies anymore.)_

“You did not tell me,” Robb said.

“No,” she said, “I did not.”

“I am your Hand,” Robb said, “I need to know—”

“You would not have approved.”

_(“You are a Queen,” Petyr says, feet propped up on the table, “We don’t need his approval.”)_

“You have no idea what I would have approved of and what I wouldn’t have because you never asked,” Robb said, jaw tight.

She said nothing.

_(Tyrion had told her once, when she had complained of Manderly, “You need someone who isn’t going to agree with all of the time.”_

_She_ knows. _But Robb listens at his lessons, hears what she says about chaos and ladders and webs and eyes everywhere all the time—but the way he looks at her when he does—)_

“How long is this to go on for?” Robb said finally, “Six months I have worked diligently for you, six months I have tried to prove myself—the Gods know why—”

“I know why,” Sansa said, “You tried to usurp the Queen—”

“You _let_ me,” Robb said, “You let me humiliate myself—”

_(Gods, they’ve already trodden this ground.)_

“Call it a draw, then, brother,” Sansa said coldly.

“Was this position meant to be a mockery of me?” Robb said, “I have accepted that I need to make restitution to our people, I have intended since my arrival to right the wrongs that I have done but you won’t _let_ me—”

“Because I need to see what you can do!” Sansa exclaimed, “Because I am trying to teach you—”

“Oh, yes, the little lessons, the advice—”

_(It’s the disdain that hurts._

_I am the winner, she thinks, I am the winner of the game you think yourself too good to play anymore.)_

Mean, “You need it.”

His eyes were hard, “So _instruct_ me now. How did this plan with Caspar come about?”

_(She had tried at first to hide the fact that she is trying to tutor him, tries to make it seem collaborative. But that method hadn’t worked with her when Petyr tried it and that method does not work with Robb now.)_

“You _know_ , the seeds of it were there the entire time,” she said, “He expressed his interest in marriage several months ago in a letter. The Iron Bank had been experiencing instability and was expressing an interest in investing in Westeros—so Lord Tyrion and I—”

He took a breath, then said, more calmly, “So you decided to trick the Iron Bank.”

“Yes,” she said.

“And you never intended to marry Caspar?” Robb said.

“No,” she said, “I wed the land. I meant what I said yesterday, I will not marry.”

_(“You survived,” Mother had said, “Your father would have been so proud of you girls.”)_

Robb rapped his knuckles on the table, “So, there will be no marriage agreement that could tempt you into—”

“No,” she said.

_(Because I am the winner, she should said, look at me.)_

“Are there any other secrets that you would like to share with me now,” he said, jaw tight, “Any other secret cousins or—”

“No,” she said quickly, “About—That was Jon’s choice—I _told_ him to tell you, Robb, really—”

“I know,” Robb said, sounded soft, “I know it wasn’t you, Sans. I just don’t understand—”

“He’s different than he was,” she said, reached across the table, “I am sorry for it anyway.”

He seemed to consider her words, another steadying breath, “I will not tell you that I like it. This scheme—”

“I don’t lie,” she said quickly, hated how it sounded like she was a child, like she was trying to _justify,_ “But he assumed that—”

“He didn’t assume,” Robb said, “You gave him your attention.”

She looked down—

_(Looked to the side, cannot find Petyr anywhere.)_

“Sansa,” Robb said, “Marriage games, I can assure you from _personal experience_ , are some of the most dangerous—”

_(The scars on her back itch.)_

Then he said, “And where precisely does Lord Tyrion fit into this,” he strained for a word, “this _arrangement?_ ”

_(Oh, he still thinks her a whore—_ arrangement _, what a delicate phrase, like this is a routine, an act to flatter men, to seduce them, like this is how she sees her crown—)_

“He doesn’t,” she said, felt the lie.

_(“Congratulations, Sansa, you are completing Tywin Lannister’s legacy. Lions finally in the North. Not through conquest but through our noble queen’s bed.”)_

Dry laugh, “I think he would have, if Caspar found him in your bed—”

“He is not in my bed. You have assured that,” burning, spat fire into his face. 

_(Six months of: Look at me, look at my ribs, look at how I starve myself._

_Without Robb, she could have kept him. He would have said yes to Bran._

_She cannot stand it anymore.)_

She took a breath, “This is none of your concern.”

_(It’s that which raises his hackles, arches his back like a wolf—)_

Hissed, “And why not, Sansa? I am your Hand! I need to know when you decide to _fuck_ a foreign diplomat.”

“He is our brother’s Hand—”

“And he was Joffrey’s before that and then Daenerys’, wasn’t he?” Robb said, “I understand that he may have his charms, Sans, but his loyalty is to whoever—”

_(Hand sliding down his back. Kisses sealed on her breast. Easy to forget the knives that they have pressed against the others’ throats.)_

“I know—”

_(“Please be kind,” she had asked, pressed a kiss to his hands.)_

But it was Robb’s turn to lecture, “You are the Queen, and I am sorry for it but whatever actions that you take public or private are actions of the crown. How can you be sure that our whale oil deal wouldn’t be stronger if he hadn’t been in your bed?”

_(Look at my ribs, she wants to scream, look at how hungry I am.)_

She turned, “I will not stand to be interrogated about this when you gave up the whole of the North for a woman. A marriage that you have wasted, a marriage that has not yielded an heir—”

_(Stark mouths are not shaped for cruelty.)_

Robb struck the table, “Don’t you _dare_ —I loved—”

_(She is neat all the time. But she has just spilling every lately—can’t stop what comes next—bile surging through her throat, speaks with her liver—)_

“You loved?” her voice was ugly, mocking, “Cersei loved Jaime, Rhaegar loved Lyanna, you loved Talisa, and hundreds died for it.”

_(It feels like the moment after vomiting, that little relief—)_

“And I have done penance for it—”

“So have I,” words thudded heavily, pearls from her lips. 

They stared at each other.

“You will never trust me,” Robb said finally, “All this tutoring, all this is just another game to you,” he slammed his fist on the table—

_(She flinches.)_

“I am done being played.” 

_(I haven’t even_ begun _.)_

She pursed her lips, closed the lid of her writing case with a decisive snap, then, with trembling control, “Then go, pack your bag, take your wife, and leave my court.”

He got up then, and she did not stop him. Right as he reached the door, he turned, “And for your own information, I never, never would have used your—whatever it is—affection for the Imp against you. And I never would have forced you to marry if you had just _told_ me. I am not _like_ you, Sansa.”

He left then, banging the door as it closed.

_(She just doesn’t believe him.)_

\--

_(She knows that she remembers the first year differently from him. They mark time differently. She knows that he loves her first._

_That the first year, when she looks at him, she sees a friend, yes, but a friend hungering._

_She heard what Bran told him about worship. Remembers it when he comes North, remembers it when he tells her, desperate, in the glass gardens that he is in love with her._

_I have no bread, never will, she thinks, as she sits and as she listens to him, you will just go hungry with me.)_

_(The second year is better. Winter is good for him.)_

\--

She did not call for Lady Flint to return. Laid instead on her bed, blew the candles out. Told a maid she was unwell. Make my excuses please.

_(Petyr is there, plays with the pots of powder, the jars of oils on her vanity, the hair pins—Even he will not speak to her—)_

The door opened.

She did not raise her head.

“Are you alright, Sansa?” Catelyn asked. She sat at the foot of the bed, “Sansa? I heard Robb and you—Talisa told me—Darling, what’s wrong?”

_(We’re going to break your heart. It was written at the Tower of Joy.)_

But she could not speak, not for the lump in her throat, shook her head. Catelyn stood and walked to the other side of the bed, crawled across and lay next to her—

_(They had done this all the time, the children, had gone to their parents’ bed in the morning, tucked themselves under Mother’s arm or Father’s, laid their heads against their breast to listen to steady heartbeats. The younger ones had crawled in with her, with Robb, too, when their parents’ chambers were too far away. Made cradles for themselves from each other’s hands and arms and chests._

_She had done it all the time. Until the year before she left for King’s Landing, when she had gotten her own lady’s chamber, in a whole other wing from the nursery. Theon had called it strange that she still sometimes went to her parents’ room. And so, she had declared herself far too old. Had declared herself a lady—)_

“I didn’t see you all of yesterday. Nobody’s seen much of you this whole trip. Talisa was wondering and Brienne had been hoping—”

“I’ve been busy.”

_(She sees the way her mother looks at her sometimes—like she doesn’t know her anymore, doesn’t recognize the imperiousness, the sharpness—)_

“We’ve all been busy,” Catelyn said, low.

_(I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m trying—)_

Catelyn drew her to her breast, moved with her, stroked her hair, “I cannot help you if you do not talk to me.”

But she shook her head again, clenched her mouth.

“Sansa.”

“You’re going to hate me,” she said finally, “You’re going to hate me.”

Catelyn gripped her chin, forced her head up, “I could never hate you. You are my _daughter—”_

She shook her head again—

_(But you left, and I found another father—)_

Catelyn watched her, then quietly, “You know when you were a baby, you could fit right here.” She drew a path down the length of her arm, “And I would hold you all night. You never were one to cry in the night—Robb did a little and Arya and Rickon—” she rolled her eyes and Sansa let out a watery laugh, “But you, Bran, too. Neither of you did cry much. But you liked to be held and you would watch the ceiling,” she chuckled, then quiet, “You were my first one born from love, Sansa.”

Sansa felt a tear, hot and sticky, leak from the corner of her eye. 

_(I wasted it, though.)_

_(I’m going to break your heart. It was written at the Tower of Joy.)_

“I am a woman grown now, though, not a child,” Sansa spat.

Cat said, a little knowing, a little twinkling, “Sansa, you’re always going to be my baby. Bran, too, and Robb and Arya.”

_(What about Rickon? She wants to scream it._

_He is never more than three in her head.)_

They fell into silence.

Finally, Cat said, “Is it the Lord Hand?”

Bitter laugh, “Which one?”

Cat smiled, “Lord Tyrion—”

She choked, a surprised sob caught in her throat, “I just—”

“It’s alright,” Cat soothed, “It’s alright—”

“It’s very hard,” Sansa said, “To be here. When he is also here.”

_(There is no other way to tell her mother the way she pulls him near, the way she pushes him away—I’m a little wanton, you see, all of Septa Mordane’s lessons gone from my head, I’ll spread my legs anytime a man will tell me he wants me—)_

_(I have a home there in that man’s body.)_

“You’re in love with him, sweetling, aren’t you?”

Sansa hid her face in her hands and nodded.

_(She has never said it, confirmed it directly to anyone but him—_

_No one had ever asked.)_

“Do you think you made the right choice?” Cat asked gently, “To leave him?”

“He left _me_.”

_(A week after he left for the South, she had written to Bran. Asked to give up his Hand. Please, she had pleaded, please, please, please let me have him with me._

_Her brother had agreed._

_And Tyrion had said no—)_

Cat raised her eyebrows in surprise, “He’s a wise man.”

Peeked through her fingers, “Do _you_ think it was the right choice?”

_(Oh, she knows that her mother does not like him—has heard from maids what she said to Talisa—he’s old, he’s dangerous like his father, he’s from the South, he’s the Imp, my daughter is bedding the Imp of all men—)_

Catelyn spoke like her, like when she was trying against all trying to be kind, carefully, “I think that if it were to become widely known, more widely known, that it would have made it very difficult to do the things that you would have wanted to do,” she said, “He is a Lannister—”

_(It seems so silly, in the end, for all the blood and ghosts that they have made, that it will be their names that will separate them.)_

“I know.”

“It doesn’t make it easy though, does it? Doesn’t lessen the loss.” Catelyn said, “And your brother?”

“He is angry with me.”

“Why?”

“I—” she said, “I lied to him again. I did not tell him the full truth of what I was doing with the Iron Bank—”

“Sansa,” her mother said, disappointed, “Sansa.”

_(She feels like a girl. Remembers the rare times she had been bad—the boys and Arya wouldn’t stop unless they were shouted at, unless they were threatened with bed and no supper—but Sansa had only ever needed a sharp word, a let-down glance—)_

“I’m not used to him and he did plot against me—”

“Sansa,” Catelyn said, low, “If you did not trust him, you should never have promised him to be Hand.”

“It’s too late now, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps,” her mother said.

“He will hate me, too, he does hate me—he thinks I am—”

_(She is a queen. A woman with servants and castles and coin and an army at her command. For all the sake of the old gods and the new, she is a_ queen, _and she is weeping like a girl over a fight with her brother—she is so stupid—)_

“No, no, no,” Catelyn said, thumb on her forehead, circling, “Hush now. You will never hate each other. Things are tricky now. He’s trying—”

Sharp, “And I’m not?” 

“I never said that, darling,” kiss to her forehead, “Come now, rest a little, things will look better after a rest. You both just need time to cool your tempers.”

_(She has missed this—the way that it sounds really very simple—she misses having things being broken down into tiny morsels—just cool off and then we’ll all be friends again.)_

Bone-deep weariness. Sank into her mother’s chest. She still wore lilac oil. Breath matched breath.

_(She does find rest in her mother’s arms. It is a longer and a better rest than she has had in many months but still—)_

“It’s time for dinner.” Catelyn rose, almost groggily, spell snapped in half, brushed out her skirts, “Come now, it’s time to eat, you’re hungry, too, perhaps.”

“I’ll take it here, I have work to finish.”

Her mother looked her up and down, “Sansa—”

Her mother did her bidding though, in the end. 

\--

She took dinner alone in her rooms. Her throat hurt to swallow. Tried to settle to Jeyne’s wedding cloak again, work on embroidering the hem—

_(Oh, but she just about bursts at the thought of him—_

_Like she does not know that her body is like a land, like a city. Everything she feeds it, everything she denies it, the very fact that she can live and walk and breathe is political. The map of scars on her back were all intentional acts of war._

_Men are soldiers, women are lands, men are conquerors, women are cities._

_Her body is like a land, like a city._

_It has always been this way. Knows that when Tyrion wed her and Petyr sold her, they were trading for lumber and wool, too. That when men praise the beauty of the face, they are praising Winterfell, too._

_Joffrey had never been about her at all. Ramsay had never been about her at all._

_Her body is like a land, like a city._

_She bared it for Robb and for Arya and for the whole of the North, look at the battle they have wrought on me, look at me and see that I am not a traitor._

_What are you trying to prove? Arya had asked._

_I don’t know. What is a charge against me this time?_

_Jon, she could not help but think, had never asked for proof of worth. He is maybe the only man who has looked at her and never seen a castle. He had no hope for it, was born with no hope for it, she thinks, and he did not have the conquering heart of other men._

_Her body is like a land, like a city._

_You’re the most wanted woman in Westeros, Tyrion had told her._

_I know, she should have said, because she does know. But Tyrion has always mistaken wanting for loving and so he misses whatever target he was trying to hit._

_There is a reason that she lets that man into her bed, that she trusts him to touch her body. It has nothing, nothing at all to do with her love for him—don’t you dare make this about whether or not she loves him—and has everything to do with the fact that he has no hope with her. She took him to bed and signed away their marriage the very same afternoon—he has no hope with her and so he is left with nothing_ but _her._

_Her body is like a land, a city. She became queen. And then her body became the land, became the city._

_She claimed her crown, claimed the North, so to hold the keys to her own gates. Stupid girl. Should known from Daenerys’ love and Cersei’s death, how foolish it was._

_“A woman’s diplomacy,” Lady Flint told her, “No man could make a deal the way you do.”_

_She just listens. This is what she should have explained. A woman’s diplomacy is not an arrangement, not marriage games, any person can play those—it is just listening, just watching—it is knowing every string in every web—_

_But her body is still a land, still a city._

_Knows she can only make a bank deal with love games because her brother is beside her, knows that it was Robb that directed Caspar’s hands, knows that any fear of war is fear of her brother, that there are few men that know well enough to look at her and quake._

_Men are conquerors, women are cities._

_She bore no love for Daenerys, bore no love for Cersei either. But they had been cities and lands, too. And she knows it, knows the rage, the grief, that comes with that knowing._

_Those acts, those acts of war on her body—it is them that she uses to kill Barbrey Dustin. Look at what they did to us, she says, when she shows her back, look at the battle they have wrought on us._

_There is power in democratizing her pain, in making war from the lacerations on her body and her heart and all those secret places. Weaves a new song from it, dresses in white silk, the lady has risen—_

_“I believe you meant ‘Your Grace,’” she said to Tyrion once in anger._

_“I am not speaking with her at the moment.”_

_What should she do with that kind of_ seeing _?_

_Her body is a land, a city—)_

\--

Arya came to her at night when she was still pacing.

“I heard you quarreled with Robb,” Arya said.

She did not answer.

_(When she had looked at her first husband, all she had seen was a starving child._

_She knew then that she would have no bread to give him._

_(What are you trying to prove?)_

_(She is hungry all the damn time._

_Spent six months begging at her brother’s table._

_But Robb has no bread for her. Mother only tiny morsels._

_Foolish girl, why is she even looking? What is she trying to prove?)_

“Can you fetch Tyrion for me?” she tossed it over her shoulder, casually.

Arya cocked her head, “Sansa—”

“Tell him to come to my solar.”

Arya stared a moment, like she was waiting. Saw that Sansa was not changing her mind and then made to leave, turned at the last moment, small smile, “Good for you.”

_(That first bite, she thinks, is always the sweetest.)_

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is Arya all of us?
> 
> the next few chapters are basically the reason I wrote this fic and I am so excited to finally publish them!!! 
> 
> Thank you everyone for your kind comments/kudos and for sticking around with this silly story <3 <3 <3 Stay safe!

**Author's Note:**

> Title and all chapter titles from the musical 'Hadestown'. Sansa is all of the characters in Hadestown. Change my mind. ;D Also the story Sansa tells is "Diamonds and Toads" by Charles Perrault aka the fairytale that fucked me up the most as a child. ;)
> 
> Tyrion would be and should be the known as the best writer of love letters in Westeros. I am not. So his letters are actually text from a love letter from Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf on January 21, 1926. It is one of the most beautiful pieces on love ever written. <3 
> 
> Thanks for reading <3


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